Buildings must be maintained more carefully than currently throughout their entire life cycle. A culture of continuous maintenance must be established for the building stock, from single-family homes to municipal service buildings. The emergence of extensive damages and related problems can be effectively prevented with anticipatory and planned repairs. Up-to-date information on the condition of the buildings helps to make the correct decisions at the right time. Quality problems plaguing the life cycle of buildings must be solved without delay.
The management of the investment gap accumulated to the transportation network must be rationalized so that the transportation infrastructure can be functionally repaired as soon as possible. In addition, on both the state and municipality level, the development of the transportation system must be agreed upon with long-term policy guidelines which span legislative periods. Ensuring an adequate transportation service level throughout the country and developing the transportation services must be set as the most important goals of the development guidelines. New transportation services can only be constructed based on up-to-date information, strong expertise and a sound physical infrastructure. In order to improve this capacity, education and research in the industry, as well as the number of international connections, must be increased.
Even though generally speaking the water, waste and energy services in Finland are in good condition and they function reliably, the related risks are increasing. In order to ensure the operational quality of small water supply and sewerage facilities in particular, a structural change is required to bring together the regionally dispersed functions which belong to the same set of services to create larger administrative units. This way the quality of water supply and sewerage services and the economic resources and expertise required by the investments and reconstruction can be ensured. It is necessary for the planning and timing of the reconstruction and development of services to get the knowledge base concerning the systems operational and openly available.
Real estate and construction industry research in Finland must be significantly increased, since the future success of the industry is based on fresh knowledge and strong professional expertise. Active international research, development and innovation activity which combines the strengths of various operators also benefit teaching. In order for the education in the field to also attract motivated and talented students in the future, the reputation and the related appeal of the industry must be improved. The challenge posed by the changing skill requirements can, for its part, be met with lifelong learning. Profiling and cooperation improve everybody’s chances of success.
The digital solutions serving the built environment require data in order to work. It is increasingly common for new services to be based on the processing of large data masses or utilization of real time information. As the amount of information increases, the adequacy and reliability of data transfer and storage capacity are emphasized. The transparency of interfaces and data sharing are key to market-based application and service development.
Strengthening the views provided by architecture, engineering, design, and art in community and urban planning and construction processes improves the quality and service capability of our living environment. As a result of cooperation between various design fields, new solutions can also be found to challenges and opportunities posed by the change-related phenomena which affect the built environment. The potential offered by creative design must be fully utilized in construction and community development. Bold renewal of the industry towards a sustainable built environment must be started without delay.