EPEA has already run more than 200 demolition projects through a single custom platform, connecting materials with over 60 partner organizations across Germany, and cutting the manual work that used to eat up entire project phases. That's the headline. The company, the world's largest assessment partner for the Cradle to Cradle® Certified program, built its Urban Mining app on Ninox to solve a problem that spreadsheets simply couldn't handle: tracking what's inside a building before it comes down.
EPEA works across industries on the path to circularity, from textiles to electronics to cleaning products, but construction sits at the center of its mission. What happens on a demolition site today decides how sustainable our cities will be tomorrow. And for a long time, what happened on most sites was straightforward: materials with real value, metals, insulation, glass, got hauled away and downcycled or dumped, simply because nobody had a fast way to catalog them.
Spreadsheets don't scale, sites do
EPEA tried Excel first. It didn't take long to hit a wall. Spreadsheets couldn't keep up with the scale of on-site data collection, couldn't sync between field teams and the office, and definitely couldn't scale across international projects run in multiple languages. The team needed something that let workers log materials directly on site, on their phones, with details on condition, hazard risk, dimensions, and reuse potential captured in the moment, not reconstructed later from memory and photos.
That's exactly what the Ninox based Urban Mining app now does. Field teams photograph and describe materials right at the demolition site, tagging location, condition, and any hazardous substances as they go. The app works offline, too, so a spotty connection on a job site doesn't slow anyone down. Once the signal comes back, everything syncs automatically, giving office and field teams a shared, real-time view of the project.
Every material gets classified and sorted into a recovery path, whether that's direct reuse, manufacturer takeback, or resale through a materials exchange. The app also calculates CO2 savings automatically, based on material weight and type, so the environmental upside of reuse is quantified instantly rather than estimated after the fact. Results flow out through PDF reports, Excel exports, or a direct API connection to Power BI, and every project folder syncs straight into SharePoint, images and documents included.
The proof is in the pudding. During the demolition of a high rise in Brussels, EPEA recovered insulation, glass elements, and carpet tiles cleanly sorted by material type, all of which found a second life in the same project or a neighboring one. That's circular economy in practice, not just in theory.
From demolition site to dashboard
The gains show up everywhere. Mobile data capture and automatic syncing have cut manual work significantly. High value materials get reused instead of landfilled. CO2 savings are tracked and reported directly, not left as a rough estimate. Disposal costs drop, storage times shrink, and residual material values become something companies can monetize. Projects mapped through Power BI give partners and clients full visibility into what's available and where. And a documented, systematic approach to deconstruction makes it far easier for EPEA's clients to earn the sustainability certifications they're chasing.
As Pascal Keppler, the head of data services, puts it:
With Ninox we have a platform that's extremely flexible. We can react quickly to new requirements, and all the relevant data flows directly to the right places.
Digitization is doing real work here, not just checking a box. EPEA's Urban Mining app shows what happens when technical expertise, environmental responsibility, and a platform built to bend around a specific process come together. It's a case study in what construction's next chapter could look like, one recovered material at a time.
