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Materials that carry their history into the next use

When a building is taken apart, its components and materials do not have to lose what is known about them. If a product's identity, condition, and provenance were already recorded in its logbook, that record can travel with it into removal, storage, and a next use — rather than starting over as an unknown material.

The passport and resolver foundations this runs on work today, and a guided illustration of the idea runs through the built-environment page's reclaimed CLT panels scenario. The survey, condition and matching record remains an illustrative workflow rather than a public transaction.

The deconstruction workflow

  1. Building. The starting point is a building or part of a building scheduled for deconstruction rather than demolition.
  2. Survey. A survey identifies what the building contains before any removal starts.
  3. Components and materials. The survey resolves into individual components and material batches, each tagged at the level of detail that is useful.
  4. Condition and uncertainty. Each item's condition is recorded, along with how confident that assessment is — uncertainty is kept, not hidden behind a single confident-sounding grade.
  5. Availability. A date range when the item will actually be free to remove is attached.
  6. Matching need. The item is matched against a receiving project's stated need, where one exists.
  7. Removal. The item is physically removed, with the removal itself logged as an event.
  8. Transfer. Custody of the item transfers to whoever is taking it forward.
  9. Next use. The item enters its next use carrying its accumulated identity and history, rather than starting a new, disconnected record.

Asset tagging and levels of detail

The same asset-level hierarchy used in the building logbook — building, space, system, equipment, component, product, material batch — applies here. A survey does not need to tag everything at the same depth; a reusable component gets a precise tag, while a bulk material can be tagged at the batch level it actually came from.

Product and material identification

Where a product already carries a digital product passport, that passport is the source of what the item is. Where it does not, identification starts from what a surveyor can observe directly and is enriched as more is learned — the same progressive-enrichment approach the building logbook uses.

Maintenance and second-life decisions

Maintenance asks whether a product can remain useful in this place. Second life asks whether it can leave, change hands and remain useful somewhere else. They are different decisions, built from the same durable keys: identity, place, time, evidence, actor and authority. A maintenance history can support a later assessment; it does not decide suitability for the receiving project by itself.

Photographs, condition, and uncertainty

Each surveyed item carries photographs and a condition assessment, and the assessment is recorded with its own confidence rather than presented as a settled fact. A later inspection can narrow that uncertainty; it is never quietly overwritten.

Inspection and hazardous or restricted materials

Survey inspection also covers hazardous or otherwise restricted materials. Where a material is identified as hazardous or restricted, that status is recorded against it directly, so it travels with the material rather than depending on later re-identification.

Quantities, availability dates, storage, and logistics

Beyond identity and condition, a circulating material needs practical facts: how much of it there is, when it becomes available, where it can be stored in the meantime, and what moving it involves. These are tracked as part of the same record, not a separate logistics sheet.

Chain of custody

Every change of hands — from the building's owner, to a deconstruction contractor, to storage, to a receiving project — is logged as a custody event, so the path an item took to its next use can be read back afterwards.

Publication of reusable products

The integration-tested Network foundation can create a standard public post that links to a public passport, letting cooperation with a potential receiving project begin from conversation while the passport—not the post—stays the source. The production Wallet does not expose this publishing flow yet.

Connection to receiving projects

An illustrative receiving project can be explored at projects today. Automated reuse matching is not exposed as a public action.

What you can use today

  • Digital product passports
  • DID resolver
  • Network publishing foundation · integration-tested

The complete guided circulation record is not yet a public workflow; see Facts for the available foundations.

Related: the building logbook a surveyed item's record originates from, and digital product passports for the identity it carries forward.