The life cycle of municipal buildings
The impact of the life cycle of a building goes beyond the quantity of resources required for its construction. In fact, the main expenditure of financial and material resources in its useful life occurs during its use stage.
As such, if the city’s SOCIAL and ENVIRONMENTAL commitments are to be met, our municipal building management will need to be continually improved.
The intention of this website is to present an overview of the life cycle of municipal buildings, in accordance with the Directorate of Municipal Building Services as the leading department for Facility Management within Barcelona City Council, and also to explain the various initiatives being carried out to ensure that municipal buildings are sustainable and promote user health through comprehensive management.
Our main responsibilities are those of managing and coordinating the cross-cutting procurement of the various services relating to municipal buildings, such as maintenance, cleaning, supplies, telecommunications and cross-cutting agreement related to municipal buildings. We are therefore tasked with creating the strategic and operational guidelines that need to be adopted in ongoing collaboration with all the management areas to offer a standard service in accordance with the current regulations in force.
In addition, this comprehensive vision of building life cycle management has made it necessary to set up a service to offer support and advice during the planning and work stages for the purposes of incorporating all our knowledge into the design and construction stages.
Sustainability and environmental friendliness
To ensure the optimal provision of services to city residents, we are making municipal buildings more SUSTAINABLE by using and producing green energy, reducing our consumption of water and resources, and improving energy efficiency to reduce our carbon footprint.
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Procuring 100% green energy by contracting Barcelona Energia, the publicly-owned metropolitan electricity distributor, for municipal building utilities and by promoting renewable energy generation facilities in existing and newly constructed buildings.
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Implementing measures to reduce environmental impact, whether in the completion of necessary works that seek to adapt buildings to changing needs throughout their life cycle by following the technical instructions for the implementation of sustainability criteria construction projects, or in the building's own activity, by taking advantage of such projects and by planning and promoting specific interventions.
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Establishing key guidelines and incorporating social criteria in the procurement of municipal building maintenance services to assess and reduce their environmental impact while improving their energy efficiency and reducing their consumption of water, materials and necessary resources, taking into account how they are used. Including a high percentage of preventive maintenance in contracts, thus reducing the cost of corrective maintenance and increasing the useful life of the facilities.
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Leading or taking part in international projects or jointly with other public authorities in order to facilitate the sharing of knowledge among public organisations, creating positive new synergies to comply with, or find new ways to better achieve, the sustainability goals as well as international recognition and the management of subsidies from European funds.
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Carefully overseeing the energy performance of municipal buildings monitored through the Barcelona Energy Agency’s specific platform in order to optimise their consumption and by planning and promoting the monitoring of the stock of existing buildings.
Promoting users’ health and well-being
We are adapting our support services for people by promoting HEALTHIER environments and habits, and we are ensuring their well-being by working on municipal buildings and making them fully available to users.
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Planning the cleaning of municipal buildings by taking into account the specific uses and needs of each one, using environmentally and people-friendly products and promoting the selective collection of waste produced in these buildings by hiring cleaning and selective waste collection services. Incorporating, as well, social criteria that guarantee respect for human rights and a reduced environmental impact.
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Promoting sustainable and healthy mobility habits among municipal building users by incorporating parking places for bicycles and other personal mobility vehicles belonging to building staff and users and introducing a “Bike-friendly building” sign.
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Adapting municipal buildings to the immediate needs of city residents in relation to the health crisis through the mobilisation of various services to ensure their safety and availability at all times. Examples include the incorporation of 94 new polling stations for the most recent Catalan Parliament elections and the initiatives carried out in relation to the stock of existing buildings to ensure compliance with the applicable health requirements.
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Helping Barcelona become a cardioprotected city by installing and maintaining defibrillators in municipal buildings.
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Guaranteeing and certifying user service quality with environmental and quality certificates, seeking excellence in municipal buildings. We can find various examples of buildings with voluntary environmental certificates, such as the Catalan government’s Environmental Quality Guarantee Seal (DGQA), LEED, and BREEAM, as well as examples of quality distinctions such as AENOR certification of the Covid-19 protocols for the Resources Manager’s Office buildings.
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Establint criteris que fomentin els productes saludables, de comerç just i ecològics, la prevenció de residus, la millora de l’eficiència de les màquines, la millora de la qualitat ambiental de les flotes de transport i la informació al consumidor en la contractació de serveis de venda automàtica i màquines expenedores.
Thorough, active and collaborative management
We guarantee a COMPREHENSIVE organisation that enables cross-cutting, active and collaborative management of all the services and tools necessary for managing municipal buildings.
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Ensuring there is a start-to-finish strategic plan in the life cycle of municipal buildings through a technical approval service for new municipal building projects or renovations of existing buildings and a cross-cutting procurement service with a Facility Management perspective.
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Promoting institutional collaboration and coordination through FMCat, a network to pool expertise on building life cycle management, as well as by sharing relevant information on municipal management through open knowledge repositories.
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Promoting e-government, incorporating and implementing new technologies such as management (GMAO) and process-control (SCADA) software, and introducing new collaborative technologies such as Building Information Modelling (BIM).
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Continuously improving service quality by carrying out audits, earning certificates and drafting specific action plans.
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Providing logistical support for city events, relocations, elections, removals and other requests received from the city warehouse, with the coordinated participation of other services to ensure an effective response.
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Offering a service to municipal-building users/managers for relaying requests and incidents involving building services (cleaning, maintenance, relocations, purchases, etc.) and monitoring them through corporate applications.
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Standardizing the main products and services of habitual and repetitive consumption of the municipal organization related to municipal buildings and the services associated with them and their users. Achieving a reduction in expenditure and guaranteeing a homogeneous and quality service aligned with the objectives of the municipal organization.
- Telecomunicacions Framework Agreement
- Framework Agreement on the supply of natural gas
- Framework Agreement for services and parcels postal
- Centralized fuel supply contract
- Framework agreement for the supply of office supplies and IT consumables, toners and inks
- Accession to framework agreement for supplying paper for printing amb writing
- Travel services framework agreement
- Water dispensers framework agreement
- Accession to framework agreement for furniture supply
News
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15/04/2024 - 16:40 h The “Rooftop Garden” project wins a New European Bauhaus Prize
The programme by the Municipal Institute for People with Disabilities has won a European New Bauhaus Prize. The award recognises the sustainability and inclusion of this horticulture project.
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15/03/2024 - 13:34 h The Climate Emergency Marathon cuts greenhouse gas emissions by 24%
The money saved through the campaign actions will be donated to a project to improve thermal comfort in residential care homes for the elderly.
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20/11/2023 - 16:08 h Publicació de la instrucció per l'efectivitat del Pla Endreça Barcelona en els edificis
Publicació de la instrucció per a l'adopció de mesures per promoure i fer efectiu el Pla Endreça Barcelona en els edificis
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20/11/2023 - 09:16 h City Council 23/10/23 - FMCat al Museu Picasso
El Museu Picasso acull el FMCat del mes d'octubre; un espai d’intercanvi de coneixement en la gestió del cicle de vida dels edificis.
Creating spaces for community life, inclusion and learning by making buildings available for the development of social innovation projects.