The safety of our facilities and the people who work in them is essential, which is why we’ve been collaborating since 2019 with Builti, an Italian startup that has developed an innovative approach to structural and infrastructural risk assessment.
The company, founded in 2018 by Massimo Bava and Enzo Castellaneta, created FIBA (Fast Infrastructure & Building Assessment), a PaaS (Platform as a Service) platform that helps corporate asset managers by providing them with efficient assessments of the structural health of buildings and infrastructure, with significant benefits in terms of safety, cost reduction and respect for the environment.
"Builti addresses the needs of asset and safety managers in a concise, effective and fast way at a low cost," Castellaneta explains. "This solution allows managers to understand, prioritize and manage the structural risks of buildings and infrastructure in their functional, productive and daily use, by local stakeholders in a broader environmental context.”
A solution to make our bridges safer
The first concrete use of Builti's platform took place in 2019 thanks to Enel Green Power, which decided to use the FIBA®-RE.SIS.TO.® module for seismic vulnerability assessment of buildings and facilities. In 2022, however, we began using the FIBA®®-LGP® module to monitor the health and seismic risk of 1,800 bridges that we have under management in various parts of Italy. It was a massive operation, involving 300 operational units in six different areas of the country for about six months. We evaluated a wide range of bridges: from simple footbridges to structures supporting the passage of motor vehicles.
"On average, these are structures built 70 years ago with the engineering criteria of the time, even though today they’re used by the heaviest modern vehicles," explains Francesco Fornari, Head of Dams & Civil Infrastructures at Enel Green Power. "Today we need to be able to use them with maximum safety, so we asked ourselves the question: how can we perform an objective assessment, respecting current standards, so that resources can be directed exactly where they are needed? Builti helped us adopt a strategy in which we mobilized our forces, but more importantly the forces already present on the market, with a specific methodology for bridge assessment."
Faster analysis at a lower cost: good for the environment, too
Using Builti's technology platform can reduce the time and cost of periodic assessments by as much as 80% compared to traditional methods. In addition, efficiently assessing the health of a structure can allow maintenance work to be performed while avoiding more costly solutions with greater environmental impact, such as demolition and reconstruction.
The rapidly growing collaboration with the startup generates positive effects for both. In 2019 and 2022, Builti's projects with Enel won the coveted SMAU Innovation Award, which has raised the company’s profile on the technology market.