Digital Product Passport for Construction

The construction sector accounts for a large share of Europe's raw material consumption and waste. New European legislation — in particular the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) — requires manufacturers to make product information transparent, digital and verifiable through Digital Product Passports. For the built environment this is a fundamental shift: materials, components and buildings must be traceable across their entire lifecycle so that reuse and circular construction become possible at scale.

Within this context the project Digitaal TEMPO in de Bouw was launched (start date 1 September 2025, dossier DPP.DPP.01.011, funded by Regieorgaan SIA and Topsector ICT as part of the Digital Product Passports call). HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht acts as lead partner; Credenco is one of the six grant recipients and provides the organization wallet technology that allows passports to be issued, managed and shared in a verifiable way.

Although the need for DPPs is widely recognized, SMEs in construction face real-world barriers. There is no shared standard for how passports are issued, verified and exchanged between the many parties in the chain. The project focuses on four core questions:

• Authentication and access: who is allowed to view or use which information?
• Integration with information systems and databases: how is data shared efficiently between parties?
• Privacy and security: how is sensitive product information protected?
• Data management and maintenance: how is the information kept accurate and reliable over time?

For Credenco, the challenge is to translate these questions into a working, scalable wallet infrastructure that matches the reality of manufacturers, architects, contractors and asset owners in construction.

Together with Quintessence Research, Credenco develops the digital solution that issues and manages DPPs. Credenco contributes its Business Wallet: the place where companies receive, hold and share verifiable credentials based on European standards (EUDI, W3C VCs). EPEA contributes expertise on Cradle-to-Cradle and material passports; Zuyd University of Applied Sciences and HU form the research backbone, guiding the practice-based research under project lead dr. A.F. de Wild.

The approach is validated through concrete use cases with project stakeholders from the construction value chain: CISKIN (Alkondor Hengelo) for circular facades, SATIJNplus Architecten for design and integration in a built object, Madaster for embedding in the circular material register, Imperfect for market distribution, and digiGO together with Biobased Nederland for sector connection and knowledge sharing.

The consortium aligns with European initiatives such as CIRPASS2 and contributes to an interoperable DPP infrastructure for the construction sector.

The project runs until August 2027. The intended outcome is a set of lessons learned, recommendations and best practices that allow SMEs in construction to adopt DPPs quickly and unlock the opportunities of circular building. For Credenco, the project delivers concrete validation of the Business Wallet in a complex, multi-stakeholder value chain, and forms the basis for broader rollout of verifiable product passports — in construction and in other sectors that will fall under the ESPR.