Energy Wise Cities project
Service design expert for City of Helsinki municipal building real-estate management unit
Energy Wise Cities was a collaborative EU-funded 3 million euro project of the 6 biggest cities of Finland: Oulu, Tampere, Turku, Espoo, Vantaa and Helsinki. The two year project focused on energy efficiency and carbon emission reduction in municipal buildings. My role in the whole project was one of service design expert participating in the coordination and execution of the project.
Helsinki’s part of the project included four different focus areas: Energy and atmospheric data visualization, Energy efficiency partnerships (so called ESCO-partnerships), Virtual power plants and Lifecycle carbon emissions of buildings. You can find a summary of the results of Helsinki’s part of the project in Finnish here.
LEADING VISUALIZATION
I lead the energy and atmospheric data visualization track in Helsinki. That meant commissioning work from two companies, overseeing the project, leading steering group meetings, solving problems as well as reflecting on the results, writing down and communicating findings. The results from the visualization track in Helsinki included 3 digital twins of 3 primary schools, 2 browser applications for vocational schools, user profiles as well as recommendations for the city in the future.
I coordinated the writing of the collaborative result of the visualization track from the whole project: The visualization guidebook together with Maija Rusanen (City of Turku) and Silja Ngobese (Valonia). I have also lead the visualization track in the whole project by organizing biweekly meetings to share insights between the city employees from the 6 cities.
“Emma is diversely talented, trustworthy and a visionary professional. Above all her strong teamwork skills and her way of working strengthen team cohesion and contribute to the joyfulness of working together. Thanks, it was a pleasure to work together!”
FACILITATING COLLABORATION
I often facilitated the process of collaboration between the 6 biggest cities of Finland. The collaboration between the cities became an everyday matter with my help, and I hope the collaboration and networks we’ve created together continue to live after the project. I also created tools and shortcuts to improve the efficiency of such future projects, and briefed the starting projects regarding communication and procurement of service design.
I was starting the participatory and ideation processes in the whole 6-cities collaboration. Some of the ideas created have become big business: The city of Helsinki is now investing 2,5 Million euros in the procurement of energy efficiency partnership services with an ESCO-model, that was originally drafted in a workshop I held for employees from different cities. The partnerships will reduce emissions in large municipal buildings such as Liikuntamylly sports centre, check out the video here.
COMMUNICATIVE & EDUCATIONAL
During the project I was part of the communications team and I gave a few public talks including one in Barcelona Smart City EXPO as well as many events in Finland. I also hosted events such as a webinar to present the results of the visualization theme of the project and gave short lectures and mentored a team of students from Helsinki University.
During the project I supported the management of our organization in the development efforts of our Helsinki Team by planning and executing team development days. I was also briefing our multidisciplinary and multi-city team on the principles of service design and design thinking.
DESIGN & PROCUREMENT
I procured service design for the project and lead the procured service design consultancy according to the goals of the project. We procured service design consultancy for small businesses in the smart building sector, and according to the feedback they benefited from it.
My responsibilities included making sure that the solutions being tested in the project are user-friendly and also useful. There is a lot of design that happens in the city real estate management without people calling it design: Whether it is about creating tools or guidelines or trying to change employees behavior. During the project I also created countless presentations for the project as well as photography, text, layouts and iconography.
“It was easy, smooth, inspiring and also fun to work with Emma. Emma holds the small details, but at the same time she understands the big picture brilliantly and strives to move things forward with determination to achieve the goals. She also easily embraces new things and gets others excited. Emma can easily take on the role of coordinator in a team as a team if she finds that it is not clearly defined or no one else wants to take responsibility and thus often succeeds in clarifying the team’s activities and common goal. ”