Researcher Life Cycle Assessment and Circularity in the built environment

The Sustainability & Circularity Assessment team in VITO provides science and fact-based advice with focus on the built environment and energy technologies. The team is part of EnergyVille, a collaboration between the Belgian research partners VITO, KU Leuven, IMEC and UHasselt.

We are looking for a driven Life Cycle Assessment and Circularity expert to support our interdisciplinary team.

Within our experienced and motivated team, we conduct research in the field of life cycle assessment (LCA), circularity guidance and assessment, digital building passports, material and component flows and innovations within the built environment. The scale of each study can vary, from raw materials and building materials to the level of neighborhoods and cities. We work for and with a variety of customers: companies and governments, at local, regional, national, European level, and worldwide level.

But most important, we are a great team that has fun together! Does this sound good to you? Then you might just become our enthusiastic new colleague ...

Some of your tasks:

• You are able to contribute to the full process of research and consultancy projects from start to finish, including the proposal preparation, management and content.

• Your projects will have a focus on the guidance and evaluation of the sustainability and circularity of building elements, buildings and districts within the built environment.

• With your professional experience and background, you are able to actively contribute to the formulation of our research strategy and share your knowledge within the team. Based on your research, new solutions can be developed, tested and brought to the market.

• You are able to monitor the project progress within the project team.

• You will ensure innovation in our field of expertise in terms of the further development of LCA and circularity methodologies, scenario analysis, digitization and data processing.

• Finally, you are eager to identify project opportunities that match our research strategy and are motivated to lead the acquisition of projects, including the writing of offers and project proposals.

Examples of projects

In the European funded research project DRASTIC, 23 partners from Europe develop and assess 5 different demonstrators with different innovative designs, construction/renovation methods in different geographic zones and focusing on different building components, with distinct local environmental, social, and economic conditions. We are leading this project and our role is to develop product and building process and design guidelines including a multi-cycle LCA (M-LCA) and multi-cycle LCC (M-LCC) approach and circularity and sufficiency indicators, aligned with the EU Level(s) framework for sustainable buildings, to validate performance measurements.

In the Demo-BLog project  several functionalities of Digital Building Logbooks will be developed, demonstrated and evaluated. Our team focuses on the “material and multi-cycle circularity” functionality as a driver for enhanced reuse marketplaces. We will evaluate the potential contribution of the Digital Building Logbooks for circular buildings. Several Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life-cycle cost analyses (LCC) and circularity scans will be carried out.

• You hold a Master's degree in a relevant field and have experience with scientific publishing, a PhD is a plus.

• You have demonstrable work experience in the field of LCA (preferably with knowledge of the Environmental Footprint method developed by the European Commission) and/or circularity in the built environment

• Demonstrable work experience in the acquisition and execution of national or international projects is a plus.

• You preferably have experience with advanced LCA software programs (f.i. SimaPro, GaBi, OpenLCA) and with data processing.

• You are adept at communicating and writing clear, understandable reports in English.

• Knowledge of English. Knowledge of Dutch is of added value but not required.

Offer

• You have real impact as you look for innovative solutions for today's and tomorrow’s challenges.

• You are supported by excellent, helpful and fun colleagues that are eager to share their expertise in the field.

• You will be part of an organization where we show integrity and always strive for mutual benefit in close cooperation with all parties involved.

• VITO/EnergyVille is an international organisation: 40 different nationalities work with us. Our working language is English.

• On average we meet 2 days a week in our EnergyVille office in Genk. We work ‘activity based’: our activities determine our workplace. For the other days you can choose to work remotely from home or at one of our satellite offices (for example in Leuven or Antwerp-Berchem) depending on the needs of the activity. Due to the nature of this position, a high level of flexibility is a plus.

• You will learn life-long and develop your skills further by using the newest of the latest technologies that you can test on the market yourself.

• We consider work-life balance to be of paramount importance at VITO. We are open to discussing your needs at any time and we have a flexible approach to finding solutions.