This week, we had the pleasure of joining a site visit organized by Spi | Agence de développement territorial pour la province de Liège at the Galère building in Chaudfontaine (near Liège).
The visit offered a hands-on demonstration of the challenges and opportunities linked to circularity in construction.
A few key takeaways stood out:
➡️ Even for a general contractor, ensuring reuse and revalorisation of materials is complex: finding buyers, managing logistics, aligning dismantling competences (different from traditional construction), and handling planning constraints remain real challenges.
➡️ At the same time, Galère made remarkable efforts to identify recycling and reuse pathways. From testing new solutions to exploring partnerships, their team demonstrated a strong willingness to push circularity forward in practice—an approach that deserves recognition. Several solutions mentioned during the visit involved BGBC members such as PPG Sigma Coatings and Knauf , showing how innovation from material producers can help accelerate change.
When it comes to circularity, preserving existing structures carries the most impact by far—much more than the effort to recover individual materials. Yet, structural issues or functional constraints (such as ceiling heights) often make this option difficult.
These insights confirm one of our BGBC Task Force priorities: the urgent need to industrialize circular solutions by fostering vertical integration with material producers. Only then can we scale beyond pilot projects.
A warm thank you to Anne-Sophie Hallet and her team at Galère for the inspiring introduction and for leading by example with their concrete actions towards circularity.
Future-Proof Real Estate, Together