From pre-deconstruction audit to Digital Product Passport: operational tools for steel components reuse

The construction sector is called upon to profoundly rethink its operational models in order to meet the demands of the circular economy and reduce environmental impacts. In this context, the reuse of steel building components represents a high-potential strategy, but it is still strongly limited by the loss of information throughout the building’s life cycle. This paper, developed as part of the Project of Significant National Interest, funded by Next Generation EU, “ST3P+L. Buildings and Circular Economy. Steel from production to post-production. Law and responsibility issues,” starting from the evolution of the pre-demolition audit towards a deconstruction and reuse oriented audit, proposes an operational procedure aimed at the identification, characterization, and preliminary assessment of steel components, supporting the selection of the most suitable post-production protocols. The pre-deconstruction audit model constitutes the basic information asset of the Digital Product Passport (DPP), which EU Regulation 2024/3110 (CPR) also requires for used and remanufactured products, ensuring its reliability. Indeed, structuring the model as an interoperable tool allows communication with open BIM software and with the DPP, ensuring traceability, information continuity, and valorization of recoverable components. Validation of the model on a case study demonstrates how the integration between pre deconstruction audits and DPP allows decommissioned components to be transformed from potential waste into documented resources, concretely enabling reuse and access to secondary materials markets.