Confirmed keynote speakers
Miro Ristimäki
Leading Advisor, Head of Business Development and Innovation
Skanska Kodit
”Industry transformation in the intersection of sustainability, productivity and digitalization – are we really creating value?”
Bio
Dr. Miro Ristimäki drives industry transformation in the intersection of sustainability, productivity and digitalization. He is currently Head of Residential Business Development and Innovation at Skanska Finland utilizing a wide global innovation network. He holds a doctoral degree in Real Estate management with the topic: Life Cycle Management in Urban Development.
Rita Lavikka
Research Team Leader
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd
”Data-driven transformation in construction: Intelligent agents and the future of project delivery”
Bio
Dr. Rita Lavikka works as a Research Team Leader in Data-Driven Circular Construction and an IPMA Level C certified project manager at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. Her research focuses on digitalising and decarbonising the built environment. Over her 20-year research career, she has published articles on the digital disruption of the AEC industry, the co-creation of digital services, and data platforms and ecosystems related to sustainability. She has coordinated international R&D projects, such as the Horizon Europe ACCORD project (2022-2025), which digitalised building permit processes using Building Information Modelling (BIM) and other data sources, and automated compliance checking using Artificial Intelligence and other methods to advance a sustainable built environment. Before joining VTT, she worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Aalto University, a visiting researcher at Stanford University and co-founded a consultancy company that focuses on facilitating digital transformation in the built environment. She has received scholarships, best paper awards and a highly commended journal article in the 2018 Emerald Literati Awards.
You can learn more about Dr. Lavikka through her LinkedIn profile and publications.
Information about the presentation:
Data-driven transformation is accelerating innovation in the construction industry, unlocking new pathways to efficiency, sustainability, and circularity. In this keynote, Dr. Rita Lavikka will present research-backed insights into emerging technologies for enhanced decision-making, project delivery and collaboration. Attendees will gain a forward-looking perspective on how ethical and strategic leadership can be amplified when intelligent AI systems support project managers by automating routine tasks, scouting sustainable resources, and enabling real-time situational awareness.
Olli Seppänen
Associate professor
Aalto University
”Building 2030 aims to transform Finnish construction industry”
Bio
Olli Seppänen is associate professor of operations management in construction. His research interests include lean construction, real-time production control, location based management systems, prefabrication / modular construction, construction logistics and digitalized construction operations. His main goal is solve the productivity problem of construction projects by leaning the process, achieving situational awareness through digitalization and moving most of the work outside of the construction site to industrialize construction.
Information about the presentation
Olli Seppänen will describe the Building 2030 consortium which is a new way to collaborate between academia and industry. Building 2030 consortium develops a vision for the Finnish construction sector in the year 2030 and participating academics and companies work together to implement it. New vision is needed to prepare for current changes in the field of construction – digitalisation, rapid urbanisation, climate change, reconstruction efforts – and to ensure a sustainable foundation for business in the sector going forward.
The work going into Building 2030 is built on international benchmarks, adopting best practices from other fields and the transformation of operations brought on by lean construction, digitalisation and new technologies.