Annie R. Pearce

Sustainable capital projects : leapfrogging the first cost barrier

Multitudinous strategies, technologies, and best practices exist to improve the sustainability of a capital project, but comparatively few of these tactics have been successfully applied in green building projects without increasing first cost. Given typically constrained budgets available for capital projects, the challenge to project managers, designers, and other project stakeholders is to identify and justify the use of cost-neutral or cost-saving sustainability features that can be included on their projects to meet increasingly stringent sustainability goals set by project owners. The objective of this paper is to identify and describe a set of techniques for finding cost effective sustainability strategies for capital projects. The paper includes a case study of an exemplary capital project from the US to illustrate a set of techniques for identifying cost-neutral or cost-saving project options. These techniques include effective problem framing, identification and exploitation of cost discontinuities through integrated design and right-sizing, dematerialisation, leveraging of free resources, and holistic cost management. The paper includes an overview of each technique and recommendations for applying that technique in project planning, design, and implementation.

Drivers for Change: An Organizational Perspective on Sustainable Construction

Sustainability is emerging as a guiding paradigm to create a new kind of built environment: one that meets the needs of humans in the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. However, despite legislative and social pressures to increase the environmental and resource-friendliness of our built environment, many construction organizations continue to operate in a business-as- usual fashion, failing to realize the potential advantages of taking a proactive approach to sustainability. To incorporate sustainability as a guiding principle, the construction industry needs both a convincing reason and a strategy to do so. This paper presents a model for organizationalchange to increase the sustainability of the built environment. The model includes a breakdown of the reasons that propel decision makers to consider sustainability in the context of built facilities, and identifies key strategic entry points for incorporating sustainability as a decision criterion over the whole life cycle of built facilities. In terms of the problem solving process used by built environment stakeholders, the model provides an overview of considerations for sustainability in terms of the life cycle of built facilities. The paper concludes with recommendations for creating execution plans to meet sustainability objectives and goals, and guidelines for surmounting barriers to change in the Architectural/Engineering/Construction (A/E/C) industry.

Paradigm Shift of Green Buildings in the Construction Industry

The green building movement continues to change the construction industry to not only mitigate environmental problems and challenges associated with construction activities, but also to optimize potential economic and social benefits of incorporating green building strategies and technologies in the built environment. This paradigm change in the construction industry is helping the industry to gain experience with this new way of building and changing its expectations for new hires from construction programs in the United States. To gauge this change, this study investigated the status, perceptions, and future directions associated with the green building movement in construction-related companies in the United States. In addition, the study also identified industry expectations of new hires in terms of green construction knowledge and skills, and the expectations and perceptions about the future of the industry with regard to the green building movement. A survey research method was used to capture current experience levels and capabilities of companies with regard to green construction. Expectations and perceptions about the future of the construction industry with regard to green building were obtained from construction-related companies recruiting from the Myers-Lawson School of Construction at Virginia Tech from 2006 and 2008. The findings of this study support the growing importance of green building as a component of the whole construction market and provide a benchmark against which to measure future changes in the industry over time.

Potential Application of BIM in Cost-benefit Analysis of Demolition Waste Management

Building information modeling (BIM) has been recently recognized as a powerful tool among the construction stakeholders. The BIM technology not only enables decision makers access reliable and accurate information but also facilitates project management processes during bidding, pre-construction, construction, and post-construction. However, possible application of BIM technology are less considered for the purpose of the end-of-life operations such as cost-benefit analysis of demolition waste management. This study aims to identify potential application of BIM in demolition waste management in order for decision makers to base their decisions on reliable and accurate information. For this purpose, three most common demolition waste management alternatives are proposed and the cost-benefit analysis is formulated based on building-related and constant variables. The variables are further categorized based on their data sources into four categories including drawings & on-site survey, literature, official statistics & regulations, and real-life data from survey. Finally a case study of one-story wood-frame residential building is simulated in order to demonstrate the potential application of BIM in supporting costbenefit analysis of demolition waste management. The result of this study can be used as the backbone for developing a BIM-based waste management tool.

The perceived value of green professional credentials to credential holders in the US building design and construction community

The popularity of green construction professional credentials has increased dramatically in recent years in the United States and abroad, due in part to the mainstream development of sustainable construction in the building design and construction community. The aim was to compare the perceived value of three broad-spectrum green building professional credentials currently available in the North American construction market: Green Globes Professional, LEED Green Associate and Green Advantage Certified Practitioner. Perceived professional and personal value derived from holding credentials, including but not limited to impacts on compensation, promotion, education, industry recognition and self-confidence, were evaluated for a sample of credential holders using an online survey instrument. Invitations were successfully delivered to 6670 certified and non-certified design and construction professionals. Of those surveyed, 730 responded to the Qualtrics survey. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to detect significant differences between the reported perceptions of different credential holders. The results revealed that Green Globes Professionals and LEED Green Associates agree more strongly than Green Advantage Certified Practitioners that earning their credentials resulted in positive professional and personal impacts. No significant differences between the perceptions of Green Globes Professionals and LEED Green Associates were identified.

Toward a Framework for Construction Ethics Education: A Meta-Framework of Construction Ethics Education Topics

Research suggests that certain practices of the construction industry have left the construction profession with an unethical stigma. In order to curb such behavior, construction programs should provide students with an awareness of unethical practices of the profession as the first step towards ethical decision-making. The intent of this study is to suggest a topic-based meta-framework for teaching ethics to construction students, highlighting what non-educational construction research considers ethical topics. This study uses qualitative textual analysis to extract ethical topics from noneducational research from 65 research papers that closely relates themes of construction and ethical issues of the profession. Emergent themes (modules) based on topic extraction groups into two categories of ethical issues in construction practice i.e., professional issues and societal issues. It is the authors’ hopes that the list of ethical topics and modules developed are a source of inspiration for those educators honored with the duty to instruct.

Teaching Social Sustainability in Sustainable Construction and Infrastructure Courses: A Collaborative Approach

This paper addresses the implementation of a teaching module related to social sustainability, focusing on the planning and design phases of construction projects. The target population for this study included 74 seniors and 40 graduate students in Sustainable Construction and Infrastructure courses offered by three firsttier academic institutions during the Fall of 2011. The module proposed here provides the foundation for discussing four social sustainability conceptual areas: community involvement, corporate social responsibility, social sustainability, and safety through design. The implementation requires four steps. The first step uses a survey to assess the students’ previous knowledge of social sustainability. The second step focuses on learning about social sustainability through a mini-lecture and a class discussion, emphasizing that this construct involves multiple perspectives. During the lecture, the students then provide specific social sustainability examples for each of these four conceptual areas. The third step involves students learning how to create concept maps based on Novak’s technique. Finally, the students create individual concept maps that are subsequently used as post-assessment tools, identifying the knowledge they have gained. The preliminary results indicate that the module provides a platform for increasing student awareness that sustainability involves more than the green features of a facility.

Sustainability and socio-enviro-technical systems: modeling total cost of ownership in capital facilities

Investment in sustainability strategies and technologies holds promise for significant cost savings over the accurately estimating the first costs of a green project during the early concept development stages is challenging, and effective ways to comprehensively predict potential lifecycle cost impacts of sustainability strategies do not exist. This paper describes a agent-based model (ABM) of the Total Cost of Ownership of green facilities applicable at the earliest stages of concept development. An ABM approach captures the social, environmental, and engineering systems that characterize a facilitys life cycle cost. It permits evaluating the impact of the institutional and industry environment on facility life cycle performance, and also captures the cost impacts of tightly coupled facility systems that characterize green design.

SUSTAINABLE DESIGN STRATEGIES TO ASSIST THE ELDERLY WITH DEMENTIA

Sustainable construction practices that take into account the ecological, social, and financial performance of buildings are gaining acceptance in many areas of the construction industry. As the baby boomers begin to retire, the provision of healthy living environments for the elderly in the community is a growing concern, especially for those suffering from dementia. Because most individuals with dementia are cared for at home until their condition requires medical supervision, healthy living is often a challenge affecting the whole family. This study examines how best to implement sustainable strategies that support healthy and safe living environments for individuals with dementia and their families. After considering how the characteristics and symptoms of dementia can be ameliorated by careful environmental design, relevant familial and community characteristics that support healthy living for the target population are described and ways of incorporating sustainable strategies to provide a healthy living environment explored. Using an evidence-based approach, the interdisciplinary research team conducted an extensive review of both medical and construction journals to develop a set of practical guidelines designed to assist those grappling with these difficult issues.

Resource Allocation and Problem Prioritization for Sustainable Facilities and Infrastructure

One of the most pressing problems in realizing sustainable facilities and infrastructure systems is deciding how to allocate economic and other resources to improve sustainability, within the constraints of limited budgets and organizational operating and decision environments. Decision makers responsible for the planning, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and decommissioning of facilities are beginning to feel increasing pressure to incorporate principles of sustainability into their decisions and actions regarding these facilities. Given these pressures, decision makers face the challenge of prioritizing already scarce resources to achieve the objective of sustainability in their facilities, while continuing to meet other objectives already in place such as occupant requirements, environmental compliance, and avoidance of risk. This paper presents a hybrid process for prioritizing facility-related problems and allocating resources to solve those problems, based on the objective of increasing facility sustainability while meeting. other goals and constraints faced by facility decision makers. The process is based on a model of built facility sustainability and incorporates aspects of resource allocation procedures used to identify and manage cost drivers for facility design and construction. The paper includes a discussion of how sustainability relates to and incorporates existing facility-related objectives and constraints, and an overview of how the process can be applied to decision making for sustainability in residential facilities. The paper concludes with recommendations for incorporating sustainability as an objective in facility decision making.