Sitowise creates smart and sustainable living spaces for the future
The Nordic expert in the built environment and forestry sector, the Sitowise Group provides specialist and digital services to its clients, helping them to prepare for the future and to meet growing sustainability and environmental requirements. Sitowise designs smart cities, smooth transport, and living spaces where everyday life is built on a sustainable foundation. From 2024, the company has also been responsible for the development and maintenance of the Elma.live platform.
Sitowise operates in the business areas of real estate and buildings, infrastructure, and digital solutions. In addition to its main operations in Finland and Sweden, the company also has an office in Latvia. Sitowise has over 2,200 employees, including engineers, application developers and other specialists. The company's 2023 annual turnover was EUR 211 million and it has been listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange.
Sitowise's client base includes municipalities, the state, companies, housing associations, and forest owners and associations. It offers services ranging from research, inspection, planning and construction partnerships to software development, service design, and general design.
It is estimated that by 2050, up to 70% of the world's population will live in cities. The Sitowise teams go above and beyond to ensure that traffic, infrastructure and different types of buildings will provide the best possible setting for a safe and carefree everyday life.
Sitowise's slogan "The Smart City Company" refers to the company’s strong digital competence, but above all, to the vision of their experts which gives confidence to create solutions that are new and innovative. All Sitowise operations are firmly based on digital solutions and open-minded utilisation of the latest technologies. At Sitowise, however, being smart comes down to more than a simple set of ones and zeros: it is also the ability to encounter and listen, to gain insights and dare to do things differently.
A versatile approach to sustainability
Sustainability has been at the core of Sitowise's strategy since 2019, when the company committed to its goal of becoming the most sustainable and responsible partner in the industry. Setting high sustainability goals requires a versatile approach to the related issues, both in the company’s internal operations and business transactions. At Sitowise, sustainability is divided into three areas: making existing business transactions more sustainable, creating new sustainability services, and making the company’s internal operations more sustainable.
The footprint of the built environment is enormous, but at the same time identifying, measuring and verifying it is widely recognised as a challenge. In response to this challenge, Sitowise has created a sustainability tool specifically designed for project work. Unique to the industry, the tool is based on the international UN Sustainable Development Goals framework, and it was adopted across the company's own projects in 2021. The tool helps to better understand the sustainability of projects and the impact of choices on the environment and society, whether they are made by Sitowise staff or their clients.
Sitowise also recognises significant business opportunities in sustainability. Four key growth drivers have been identified for sustainable development business: renewable energy, adaptation to and mitigation of climate change, biodiversity, and circular economy. New business concepts are developed at the group level in collaboration with different business activities and clients.
The third priority area is the development of Sitowise's internal sustainability activities. The process follows the four objectives of the company’s sustainability program that extends to 2025.
Increased influence through business acquisitions
In 2023, Sitowise acquired Positive Impact Finland Oy, an expert company offering environmental and sustainability solutions and software development services. Founded in 2019, Positive Impact quickly established itself as a leading expert in areas such as carbon footprint calculation, and became known for its ability to solve demanding sustainability issues in an innovative and particularly user-friendly way. Positive Impact has implemented, among other things, a carbon footprint calculator for the tourism industry for Visit Finland, as well as building the Elma.live digital platform for the sustainable development of live music in 2022.
Elina Levula, founder and former CEO of Positive Impact, talks about the early days of Elma:
"In early 2022, we were delighted to be chosen by the Finnish Jazz Federation to develop a digital sustainable development platform for the music sector. This was followed by an intensive collaborative period with the Jazz Federation working group. Our schedule was ambitious and our programmer was hard at work, especially towards the last days before the launch: the development work began in the spring and the platform was already up and running in September. But the end result is a unique, highly practical sustainability tool, with a special focus on the visual appearance as well."
Through the acquisition, Positive Impact and its owners, experts and client relationships became a part of the Sitowise Group and its services. Together, Sitowise and Positive Impact are able to respond even more comprehensively and effectively to major sustainability challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and overconsumption of natural resources, and implement digital solutions to create efficiency in a sustainable future.
New openings into the sustainability transition of the creative industries
Today, sustainability affects companies widely, and in the near future its role will continue to grow. One of the driving forces will be the legislative changes that are expected to come into force both in Finland and at the EU level in the coming years, which will radically change organisations’ obligations to evaluate and report their non-financial performance and build more sustainable processes and business models.
In addition to the sustainability platform Elma.live, Sitowise has a number of other development projects underway in the creative industry. Elina Levula, who now works at Sitowise as Group Manager of Climate and Sustainability Group, identifies a range of development opportunities in the sustainability transition of the creative industries.
"Today, responsibility and sustainability are expected from all professional operators, including the creative sector, and it is acceptable to openly identify and address the various flaws and weaknesses across the industry. In the music and event sector, there is still plenty of room for development on the technical side before achieving low-carbon solutions, starting with data transfer and extending all the way to mega-class concert productions. Artists, on the other hand, have ample opportunities to exert influence by making their voices heard on these issues. Innovative new openings keep cropping up across the creative sector, such as the recent testing of the Nordic Swan Ecolabel’s event criteria at the high-profile stadium concert of the Finnish band PMMP in summer 2024."