This paper reviews the authors' work on Integrated Planning (IP) as a construction site management tool. IP integrates the different planning skills used by site managers, construction workers and craftspersons into an interactive group which manages a production planning process from the earliest stages to the end of a building project. The studies reviewed in this paper, performed over the last three decades, tested, longitudinally evaluated and refined the IP model for use in modern sustainable building sites. The refined model, Integrated Planning for Sustainable Building Production (SBP), includes the factors: leadership, health and safety, quality management and environmental management.

The municipality of Östersund is presently developing a new township called Storsjö Strand close to the town centre by the lakefront of the lake Storsjön. The ambition is that the new area should be a good example of more sustainable building engineering and societal planning. Mid Sweden University was engaged to follow the process in action research setting, and to enhance the learning process. A triple helix process intending to better achieve such outcomes was presented at the Eco-tech 2014 conference. The process has now moved to a stage where the first two buildings are erected.

This paper reports on present status with a focus on how the sustainability goals have been transferred through the chain of involved organizations and individuals, developers and contractors, but also how the goals affect the production of the building, regarding materials, methods and costs, based on interviews . We have observed connections between sustainability outcomes, and the combination of quality of the goals set for the project and the types of processes for achieving them. So far, it seems like the sustainability goals partly have been transferred through the process. The process will be followed until the buildings has been in use for some time

The built environment is an important component for a sustainable society. Choices made today will affect society during decades to come, both regarding performance of buildings and in affecting what is possible choices regarding mobility, energy, waste handling and human well being in general. There have been several projects in Sweden and around the world aiming at better sustainability performance of new built areas. A strong experience from earlier projects is that it is not that easy to actually achieve high ambitions set up at project initiation; the most common example in this direction that requirements on energy efficiency are not achieved when measuring in actual use of the final building.The project Storsjö Strand, a new township in Östersund in an earlier industrialized area, has aimed to work around identified earlier problems, using a strong interactivity and a triple helix process with the municipality, developers, and the university. The role of the university is to through an action research approach both be involved in the process to help guide it and to document and evaluate the process, with the research goal to contribute to and develop sustainable building processes for Sweden and elsewhere.The Storsjö Strand project is presently an ongoing project. This paper describes the approach taken and how it is a development of earlier approaches for sustainable building processes and also evaluates early experiences of the triple helix process.