| Date | October 9th – 13th, 2018 |
| Location | Ljubljana |
| Organizer | RTC Europe Foundation |
| Client | RTC Europe Foundation |
| Event type | Conference, summit |
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The BILT Europe series of Events is a part of a worldwide series of annual events for Leaders, Experts and future Experts within the building industry, a dedicated event to its community within the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction), a hands-on training environment on best practice and latest technologies utilised within our field of work. The BILT Europe is traveling throughout Europe overcoming boundaries currently afflicting the public and private sector of the building industry by reaching out and embracing local communities and providing a network of support during our day to day work processes and currently used practices, assisting to create long lasting relationships and connections for everyone who is part of the BILT family. The events are steered by a volunteering committee and organised by a non-profit organisation (RTC Europe Foundation). With our series of events we touch base with the building industry in all disciplines, creating a multi- and interdisciplinary training environment – supporting to revolutionise rusty traditions that are prone to costly errors during construction phases by showcasing the latest solutions in best practice, accuracy in construction and cost management, accelerating efficiency of a building lifecycle, from schematic design to facility management. The BILT Europe Events are known as being unique in the building industry as it focuses mainly on information, education and high-end technology.
We struggled to get connected with the public and private sector of the building industry in Slovenia as well as getting connected with universities locally. The Ljubljana Convention Bureau has been a key contributor to accelerate preliminary talks with interested private sector parties in which we also encouraged local experts to submit an abstract on their best practice and were lucky to accept a few as well as we got support from local tool creators in our sector enthusiastic of BILT coming to their region and lending their support to get us meetings with senior lecturers of local communities. As the BILT is an event by users for users, the set up of the event is costly, another obstacle here is the wage discrepancy of building industry experts throughout the regions of Europe. We were able to discuss this with the BIM User Group Slovenia and support their attendance with dedicating a reduced fare especially for the building community of Slovenia. Generally, the building industry is regarded as the slowest industry adapting to latest technologies and best practice as it is experienced as disruptive and partially threatening, throughout the disciplines starting with faculties til Senior Management as well as government, including, mobilising and encouraging everyone remain a key challenge since we started with the conference formerly know as RTC since 2013.
The BILT Europe series of events includes everyone within the building industry. Our goal of being creative are simplified down to 3 “i’ = Innovation, Inspiration, Information. Which we highlight this year by holding our inaugural BILT Academy Summit, dedicated to all students currently studying architecture, engineering and construction by bringing in Mentors from allover the world creating a workshop environment in which over the course of the day students will be learning 3 key learning objectives towards the expertise of the selected mentors. An interactive and fun training environment and exposing local as well as pan-european students to the latest technology and organising a Hackathon-style LAB set-up to explore the up’s and downs of the diverse technology that can be utilised and the complexity of retrieving accurate data out of geometry when utilising different platforms. But since we mainly design already in the 3D environment we also bring in 5D solutions to showcase the digital work environment they will face when leaving university.
The biggest innovative aspect of our BILT conference is Inclusion within the conference program. Designed and curated to address every facet of the building industry, shaping a program that overcomes the “silo”-thinking within the disciplines and supports the culture of collaboration by changing not only the mindset but also by enabling participants to think out of the box. The program showcases integrated planning, meaning that i.e. an architect needs to understand the obstacles of a structural, mechanical, electrical, geological, infrastructural engineer during design and construction phase and by doing so understanding the importance of having to create task teams to increase productivity and efficiency and vice versa. This kind of program set-up is unprecedented within the building industry as it cultivates a mindset that not only looks at the industry to increase productivity and ROI but also a strong feeling for sustainability by delivering accurate data and accurate buildings, reducing costs to improve a building lifecycle by sustainable means for example creating buildings that have a multi purpose lifecycle.
The BILT Europe – being part of the worldwide series of Events executes its events with a dedicated events management towards our community or Association and which is based in Sydney, Australia. RTC Europe Foundation is the non profit organisation running the european events utilising the services of the events management team which is dedicated entirely to our events. The decision making processes for the event are discussed with the local volunteering steering committee and executed by the Chairman and Region Manager. We rely only on local suppliers at the destination of our events and are increasing tourism of the destination substantially before, during and after our events. The event itself is designed to benefit everyone involved with, from the venue, to the AV – over catering and social event venues to the participants. As our credo is Collaboration, we are excited to excite our suppliers with our passion towards our events, Execution seems for us more in Communication, with the community, with the destination, with our venues, with our suppliers. We may start negotiating as strangers and will leave as friends after our events.
Increasing attendance by attendance to our events by 22,5% annually showcasing a moderate growth pattern. Increasing carbon footprint reduction due to migrating services into digitalisation.
As our events are for the community, we are strong in social media. We heavily use Twitter as a platform for support and networking. We announce latest and greatest via our Global Newsletter highlighting each week another facet of the industry (subscription only)and strongly support other community-driven initiatives and platforms on Linkedin or other means. We communicate directly and individually, by meaning what we are stating: facilitating a strong support and network for everyone that reaches out to us from near or far. Collaboration is communication.
The BILT series of events dedicates this year ( BILT EUR 2018 in Ljubljana) itself to ban all plastic material in all catering aspects! We seek to improve to create stage prep by next year to biodegradable.
We banned the overuse of paper (session handouts, conference program) to this years event and rather digitalise these in our events app.
Branding of the conference is still an issue as we need foil and banners to signature the venue but til today were not able to find suppliers that create environmentally friendly branding solutions. This is not a lack on our part but a lack genuinely in this particular branch of the event industry. We started to include in our RFP to prefer venues (conference, social events, accommodation) within walking distance and fully accessible to all participants including peers with an impairment during our events.
All our conference gifts are very sought after – highly useful and usually unique, representing not only the innovation of the destination but shaping a lasting memory that can be used over and over again.
