The 20th annual Barcelona Building Construmat, the International Construction Exhibition held at Fira de Barcelona, will place great emphasis on innovation and digitalization as drivers of industry change. This year, Sorigué will participate in the fair as a Global Partner and will have a major presence, with a booth that it will use to display outstanding projects in the area of Construction and Materials, along with the latest innovations in its other business areas: Services, Technology and Engineering. In addition, the company will organize a series of conferences dealing with key industry issues, led by its own professionals and by outside presenters. 

Ana Vallés, the current chair of the event, hopes that “BBConstrumat will bring relevance to the industry during a period of fundamental recovery, for the sake Spanish economic growth as well as world-wide growth”, and in this connection she points out that “innovation is the key to the future for every construction process, and this event will help the industry discover how to expand its horizons”. 

From the 23rd to the 26th of May, 2017, Barcelona Construmat will take up 13,000 square meters of exhibition space in pavilion 2 of the Gran Via hall at Fira de Barcelona, in a yearly event that will be broadly represented by all segments of the construction industry value chain.

The event director, architect Ione Ruete, affirms that BBConstrumat seeks to become an “indispensable event at which the industry can be recognized, can become aware of the latest developments and trends, and can find business opportunities that will allow it to access new international markets.”

The twentieth annual fair will revolve around four themed areas: The Industry Arena, a large commercial exhibition space, showcasing the reality of today’s construction industry; the Future Arena, consisting of more than 2,000 square meters of space where innovation will take center stage, in a dynamic format that will be used to address all phases of the construction life cycle, from design to rehabilitation; the Talks Arena, the fair’s space for discussion and knowledge transfer (which has always been one of the event’s main distinguishing features), consisting of three separate conferences dealing with Social Housing, the Circular Economy, and Innovation; and the Meetings Arena, BBConstrumat’s platform for business contacts, which will include the National and International Contract Forum, the Investment Forum, the Brokerage Event, the Employment Forum, and the international consulting service, among other activities.

Confluence of industry events 

The BBConstrumat National and International Contract Forum will be coordinated by the College of Interior Designers of Catalonia (CODIC) for the purpose of emphasizing the value of the work done by interior designers. The Contract Forum will include the participation of interior design professionals and entrepreneurs from around the world, especially from the hotel industry, although representatives of the commercial and retail sectors will also attend. In addition to Spanish hospitality companies, the Forum will also be attended by hotel chain owners from throughout Latin America, as hosted guests.

In addition, Barcelona Building Barcelona, in cooperation with the Official College of Architects of Barcelona (COAC), will organize ‘Architecture Week’, a series of activities intended to saturate Barcelona with architecture, design, and construction during the trade fair in the form of architectural workshops, discussions, a film cycle, and expositions.

Also to be held within the framework of the event is the third annual European BIM Summit (EBS), organized by the College of Surveyors of Barcelona (CAASTEEB), the BIM Academy and the Spanish chapter of buildingSMART. This event will present the latest developments in this IT system, Building Information Modeling (BIM), a way to generate and manage a building’s data throughout its life cycle. 

The 17th annual BBConstrumat Prize ceremony, which will include categories for Building, Civil Works, Innovation in materials and products, Innovation in design and service, and Best booth, will be the concluding event of BBConstrumat 2017.