Serco Europe awarded new Horizon 2020 sustainability project

Serco Europe has won a new H2020 project as part of a winning consortium involving 47 partners from 15 different countries. The five-year PROBONO project, funded by the European Commission, was selected among 115 project proposals for a Horizon 2020 Framework Programme call on building and renovating in an energy and resource efficient way.

The PROBONO project aims at providing concrete solutions for the design, construction, and operation of new or retrofitted zero-pollution and positive energy buildings in sustainable and green neighbourhoods. The project will be piloted through Living Labs in Madrid, Dublin, Porto, Brussels, Aarhus, Prague. Living Labs will involve local authorities and citizens and will fully exploit digitalisation and smart technologies to the benefit of society.

Serco, a leading provider of public services, will be involved in the network of Living Labs, evaluating business cases for sustainability transition and analysis of Living Labs lifecycle in terms of integrated facilities management, sustainable procurement, circular economy and complex managed services. Serco will also investigate how these sites are used by employees and visitors, and how both internal and external behaviours and usage impact and influence sustainability, including but not limited to energy usage, carbon output and mobility.

Serco will also build a Macro-Knowledge base & Green Buildings and Neighbourhood Framework which will represent the overall set of requirements and needs for the vision, structure and approach to PROBONO’s Green Buildings & Neighbourhoods. 

Following the implementation of the project in the Living Labs, the consortium will be responsible for suggesting evidence-based policy recommendations and standardisation actions to ensure a wider scale adoption.

Gaetan Desclee, Serco Europe Managing Director says “One of our objectives in Europe is to become a net-zero business by 2030, which makes us extremely proud to have such key roles in the project.  The PROBONO project can make a difference to the sustainability transition and we look forward to collaborating with partners”