Finnish building engineering firm combining retrofit design, energy simulation, and occupant behaviour tools for energy-efficient buildings.
Granlund is a Finnish engineering and consultancy firm specialising in building systems, energy performance, and indoor environment design. In H2020 projects they contributed expertise in building retrofitting methodology, energy simulation, and Building Information Modelling (BIM) for renovation design. Their later EU work shifted toward the occupant side of energy efficiency — developing digital tools, advisor applications, and gamification-based systems to change how building users actually behave with energy. In practice they bridge the gap between technical building engineering and the human factors that determine real-world energy consumption.
In NewTREND (2015–2018) Granlund contributed retrofit design methodology, BIM-based collaborative design workflows, and energy performance simulations for next-generation building renovation.
In eTEACHER (2017–2021) Granlund worked on ICT-based engagement tools, BACS add-ons, advisor apps, and gamification to shift building users toward lower energy consumption.
eTEACHER explicitly addressed indoor environmental quality alongside energy efficiency, reflecting Granlund's core consultancy work on building comfort and health conditions.
NewTREND listed BIM and collaborative design among Granlund's contributions, consistent with their professional engineering practice in building systems design.
Their first H2020 engagement (NewTREND, 2015) was grounded in the technical engineering layer — retrofit design processes, BIM workflows, and energy simulation tools used by designers and engineers. By their second project (eTEACHER, starting 2017), the focus had moved decisively toward the human layer: how occupants interact with building systems, how to engage them through apps and gamification, and how automation add-ons (BACS) can reinforce behavioural change. The trajectory is clear: from designing energy-efficient buildings to making the people inside them behave in ways that actually deliver the energy savings.
Granlund is moving toward the intersection of smart building automation and user-facing digital tools — a strong fit for future projects combining building performance with digital twins, human-computer interaction, or demand-side flexibility.
Granlund has participated exclusively as a consortium partner across both projects, never taking a coordinator role, which suggests they engage EU research as a practitioner contributor rather than a project driver. With 27 unique partners across 8 countries in just two projects, their consortia were notably broad, indicating experience working inside large, multi-partner innovation actions. This profile — specialist industry partner in large consortia — makes them a reliable, low-overhead participant for future IA-type projects needing real-world engineering or building consultancy expertise.
Granlund has built connections with 27 distinct organisations across 8 countries through just two projects, suggesting they joined large, diverse European consortia rather than narrow bilateral partnerships. Their network likely spans research institutes, building sector companies, and technology developers across Northern and Central Europe.
Granlund is one of Finland's largest building engineering consultancies, which gives them something most research partners cannot offer: real professional practice at scale, with direct access to building owners, facility managers, and renovation projects where research outputs can be tested and deployed. Unlike university partners, they bring market credibility and commercial distribution channels for energy efficiency tools. Their combination of technical building systems expertise and demonstrated interest in occupant behaviour is unusual and valuable for projects that need both the engineering and the human-factors angle covered by a single partner.
