Engineering Phase
Sustainable Construction Research Group
University of Alberta, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
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Newly imposed or planned regulations will reshape the engineering phase of construction projects to be more sustainable. since the main target is to reduce energy consumption and waste of construction materials to reduce GHG emissions, our research focuses on employing low-emitting or recycled materials, conserving energy, reusing land resources, and collaborating with other initiatives.
Mohammad Masfiqul Alam Bhuiyan and Ahmed Hammad
The purpose of this study is to investigate the state of engineering and design research for sustainable construction. It aims to report the current status and future trends within this dynamic field, combining econometric and content analysis using the Bibliometrix R encapsulation tool. This study reviewed academic journals using bibliometric analysis. We selected articles by searching the Scopus database. Primarily relevant articles were identified and screened. The dataset comprised a substantial compilation of 731 journal articles from 278 sources published between January 2000 and June 2023, which formed the basis of the in-depth analysis. The importance of sustainable construction is gradually gaining more attention, and engineering and design are the significant phases of construction. This research identifies that sustainable construction is nothing in isolation; instead, it warrants the holistic integration of multiple factors, as illustrated in the Sankey diagram. Recycling, durability, life cycle assessment, innovative materials, and energy efficiency have emerged as central themes, reflecting global concern to enhance sustainability, reduce environmental impacts, and optimize resource utilization. This study is a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, offering guidelines for collaborative efforts towards sustainable development. This paper paves the way for interdisciplinary cooperation and strategic alignment among diverse stakeholders, promoting innovative approaches to sustainable construction.
Mohammad Masfiqul Alam Bhuiyan and Ahmed Hammad
In recent years, the performance of the construction industry has highlighted the increased need for better resource efficiency, improved productivity, less waste, and increased value through sustainable construction practices. The core concept of sustainable construction is to maximize value and minimize harm by achieving a balance between social, economic, technical, and environmental aspects, commonly known as the pillars of sustainability. The decision regarding which structural material to select for any construction project is traditionally made based on technical and economic considerations with little or no attention paid to social and environmental aspects. Furthermore, the majority of the available literature on the subject considered three sustainability pillars (i.e., environmental, social, and economic), ignoring the influence of technical aspects for overall sustainability assessment. Industry experts have also noted an unfulfilled need for a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) technique that can integrate all stakeholders’ (project owner, designer, and constructor) opinions into the selection process. Hence, this research developed a decision support system (DSS) involving MCDM techniques to aid in selecting the most sustainable structural material, considering the four pillars of sustainability in the integrated project delivery (IPD) framework. A hybrid MCDM method combining AHP, TOPSIS, and VIKOR in a fuzzy environment was used to develop the DSS. A hypothetical eight-story building was considered for a case study to validate the developed DSS. The result shows that user preferences highly govern the final ranking of the alternative options of structural materials. Timber was chosen as the most sustainable option once the stakeholders assigned balanced importance to all factors of sustainable construction practices. The developed DSS was designed to be generic, can be used by any group of industry practitioners, and is expected to enhance objectivity and consistency of the decision-making process as a step towards achieving sustainable construction.
Efforts to improve the sustainability of the building construction sector have tended to focus on reducing operational energy cost, whereas sustainability considerations in the material selection at the design and construction phase have received less attention due to construction budget constraints. The present study proposes a decision support system (DSS) to assist decision-makers in accounting for sustainability in their construction material selections. We demonstrate how the developed DSS can be used to identify the most sustainable insulation materials and thicknesses among commercially available alternatives. The DSS ranks available alternatives by incorporating individual project information, material information, and the decision maker’s preferences. Technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) and Pareto search technique are combined in the methodology. By limiting the alternatives to the ‘Pareto front’ of life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost in a multi-objective optimization setting, we seek to reduce subjectivity in the multi-criterion decision-making process. Moreover, product-specific environmental product declaration is used to calculate the embodied energy for the LCA. The framework recommends commercially available materials and thicknesses accordingly. The proposed method is programmed in Python to establish a user interface for data input and output of results.
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