The background
ABN AMRO is taking on the major task of revamping every customer-facing location in the Netherlands, giving the offices a new sustainable and uniform appearance. The company’s GREENE Concept provides a guideline for this appearance, and Copper8 helped establish its circular principles. We did this by applying our technical expertise in the field of circularity and supporting ABM AMRO as they selected the design partners.
Context
ABN AMRO is emphatically committed to its role in the transition to a circular economy, both when advising clients and in terms of the company’s own operations. The customer environments that are being rebuilt in line with the GREENE Concept must radiate as a physical translation of ABN AMRO’s mission: ‘Banking for better, for generations to come’. This therefore puts a strong focus on the responsible use of materials through the application of circular principles. Within GREENE, this means focusing on retaining the maximum possible value of waste materials and ensuring that any new materials required in the project can ultimately be reused in a high-quality way.
The question
Support ABN AMRO in realizing circular construction in the rollout of its new sustainable and uniform GREENE Concept. Supervise the construction project leaders and work together to develop a process for selecting the right partners.
Current situation and future
Using the sustainable Circl pavilion as an example, ABN AMRO now wants to implement the same circular principles in its other customer-facing environments. However, they had not set out a clear goal for these principles. To carry out the design and implementation of this project, we worked with existing partners who are located across the country, and ABN AMRO already had agreements with furniture suppliers, so the procurement department had to be closely involved in the process. The circular principles also needed to be in line with ABN AMRO’s ‘corporate’ appearance.
The process
To properly understand the existing concept, we had discussions with the project leaders, which clearly revealed process-related challenges (including which parties we should collaborate with) and technical challenges in the field of circular construction. Based on input from these discussions, we drafted a circular assessment framework (called the CAK, circulair afwegingskader in Dutch), which helps project leaders make the most appropriate circular choices. We then supported the creation of a process for selecting an interior architect for this challenging circular assignment.
The results
The result of our effort is that the people involved have a clear understanding of the circular principles on which the GREENE Concept is based. We delivered two assessment frameworks – one to help the team select suppliers who think and work circularly (‘Light’ assessment framework) and one to help them purchase the most circular products (‘Heavy’ assessment framework). By working closely together, we also succeeded in selecting an ambitious interior architect who can apply the GREENE Concept with circular principles. Thanks to all this, the first GREENE environments are currently being created.
