Leidy Klotz

A design process evaluation method for sustainable buildings

Abstract This research develops a technique to model and evaluate the design process for sustainable buildings. Three case studies were conducted to validate this method. The resulting design process evaluation method for sustainable buildings (DPEMSB) may assist project teams in designing their own sustainable building design processes. This method helps to identify critical decisions in the design process, to evaluate these decisions for time and sequence, to define information required for decisions from various project stakeholders, and to identify stakeholder competencies for process implementation.

Incorporating the Social Dimension of Sustainability into Civil Engineering Education

Social sustainability is often overlooked in favor of environmental and economic considerations in civil engineering (CE) education. To help address this issue, this paper presents two instructional approaches to introduce students to social sustainability by using a conceptual model derived from four dimensions of social sustainability: community involvement, corporate social responsibility, safety through design, and social design. In the first instructional approach, the instructor is the primary facilitator; in the second approach, the students become the experts, sharing their knowledge with their peers. Methods to assess student understanding of these dimensions, such as concept mapping, are proposed. By providing the conceptual model and methods to teach it, this paper is for the purpose of assisting those teaching the social dimensions of sustainability to CE students, who will gain an understanding of how their technical decisions affect social sustainability.

Counterfactual Analysis of Sustainable Project Delivery Processes

Research is revealing that certain delivery process attributes influence the outcomes of sustainable construction projects. This preliminary research leads to follow-up questions such as which attributes are most influential? And how can the influence of these attributes be quantified? Answering questions like these is impractical using only traditional construction research methods. Delivery process attributes can have greater impact on one sustainable project and less on another, and controlling the numerous variables involved is nearly impossible. To answer questions facing similar constraints, economist Robert Fogel pioneered the counterfactual analysis research method, winning a Nobel Prize in the process. The objective of this article is to describe the adaptation and testing of counterfactual analysis to assist study of sustainable project delivery processes. Counterfactual analysis is especially well suited for sustainable projects, with their complex processes and stakeholder interactions. The adapted six-step method is informed by applications of counterfactual analysis in fields including economics, history, and political science. Descriptions of each step include specific examples from a pilot study of the method. A path forward is outlined for applying counterfactual analysis to examine key questions related to sustainable construction projects and to more broad areas of construction research.

Process transparency for sustainable building delivery

The construction and operation of buildings account for more than one-third of all material and energy flows worldwide. Therefore, a greater market share of buildings that reduce the associated negative impacts is essential to address global issues, including energy and water shortages and the climate crisis. Proven strategies and technologies exist today for more sustainable buildings, but a need to improve their implementation remains. The processes for planning, designing, building and operating, or ‘delivering’, these projects are complex and often unfamiliar to the stakeholders (e.g. owners, designers and constructors) whose collaboration is essential to implementing sustainable solutions. In other industries, process transparency helps facilitate complex, unfamiliar processes by making their status, goals and rules visible to all stakeholders. The objective of this research was to examine whether increased process transparency can reduce costs for sustainable buildings. The delivery processes of two recently completed sustainable building projects are compared to the ‘counterfactual’ delivery of the same projects with complete process transparency. The research results demonstrate that substantial cost savings are possible through improved delivery process transparency on sustainable buildings. Based on these results, strategies to enhance transparency on future projects are discussed along with implications for industry and education.

Well-Endowed Rating Systems: How Modified Defaults Can Lead to More Sustainable Performance

AbstractRating systems are often used as design/decision tools to evaluate, grade, and reward infrastructure projects that meet sustainability criteria such as reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, preservation of wildlife habitat, and accessibility to community cultural resources. Embedded within any such rating system is choice architecture, which refers to the way information is presented to a decision maker. This research examines the impact on design choices of changes to defaults in the choice architecture of the Envision rating system for sustainable infrastructure. Currently, the default score in each category of Envision is zero points. Points are earned by improving upon industry norms. To test the impact of changing these defaults, participants (senior-level and graduate students) randomly received either the current Envision version or a modified version with a higher default score, endowing participants with points in sustainability. All participants used their randomly assigned rating syst...

Green Credits Versus Environmentally Sustainable Traffic Operations: Comparison of Contributions to Energy and Emissions Reductions

Although society is facing a variety of environmental issues, including the depletion of energy resources, and has a much greater awareness of climate change and its serious related social impacts, transportation systems have been pushed to increasingly greater limits because of the dramatic growth in traffic demand. A case study was performed to compare the contributions of green construction credits and those of environmentally sustainable traffic operations to reducing energy use and emissions. The study measured the impacts of green credits by using the Carnegie Mellon University economic input–output life-cycle assessment model. These impacts were compared with those achieved through sustainable traffic operation strategies, consisting of a high-occupancy vehicle lane and access to public transit. The study shows that the energy and emissions reductions obtained by use of the traffic operation strategies eclipsed those obtained by use of the green credit measures in just 1 month of traffic operations. The carbon dioxide emissions created and the total energy consumed by only 1 month of traffic were three times greater and 30% more, respectively, than those obtained by repaving the same roadway. In addition to reducing emissions, environmentally sustainable traffic operations offer social sustainability benefits, such as reducing traffic delays and improving flow, which reduce the demand for transportation infrastructure and which can ultimately reduce the need for new roadway construction. Although both green credit measures and environmentally sustainable traffic operations are essential to true sustainability, the relative impacts of both traffic operations and construction credits should be considered when research and infrastructure investments are prioritized.

Using Framing Effects to Inform More Sustainable Infrastructure Design Decisions

AbstractDecision aids, ranging from rating systems to design software to regulatory standards, guide the design and evaluation of infrastructure projects. To present the information in these decision aids, there must first be some options such as, attributes are or are not presented, and, just as in other domains, these factors are likely to influence decisions in infrastructure development. The authors of this paper seek to better understand how choice structures influence engineering decisions. Prospect theory, which is well established in the behavioral sciences, asserts that people tend to think of possible outcomes relative to their starting point, not the resulting end point. For instance, framing a decision outcome as a loss in value (rather than a gain) can reduce the decision makers’ acceptance of risk and, in turn, lead to more conservative outcomes. To measure framing effects in engineering decisions, this paper uses the Envision rating system for sustainable infrastructure, which aims to help ...

Potential Solutions to Common Barriers Experienced during the Delivery of Building Renovations for Improved Energy Performance: Literature Review and Case Study

AbstractTo reduce the energy use and carbon emissions from buildings, there is a need to efficiently renovate existing buildings for improved energy performance. In response to this need, this study compares barriers and solutions for sustainable building renovation from the literature to a case study of barriers and solutions from a building renovation for improved energy performance. For example, the barrier of unforeseen conditions, affecting both cost and schedule performance, was addressed through a comprehensive building inspection guide to evaluate existing conditions and reduce risk. This barrier and solution appeared in both the literature and in the case study. Widespread adoption of the solutions presented in this study could provide more affordable renovations for improving building energy performance, and in doing so, help develop the market for building renovations to improve energy performance.

Measuring Sustainability: How Traffic Incident Management through Intelligent Transportation Systems has Greater Energy and Environmental Benefits than Common Construction-Phase Strategies for “Green” Roadways

ABSTRACT The research presented in this paper compares the direct emissions and fuel consumption savings of five different strategies for greener roads. Specifically, savings from an incident management strategy using an Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) application, traffic cameras, is compared to savings from strategies focused on the construction phase including; using regionally provided materials, reducing fossil fuel use, reusing pavement, and using warm-mix asphalt. The comparison used lifecycle assessment to evaluate a 10-mile segment of a key urban interstate in South Carolina. The results revealed that within the first year of operations, implementing the selected ITS strategy would provide a fuel savings that is over 3 times greater than the combined savings that could be realized by implementing all 4 construction-phase strategies together. For an 8-year repaving schedule, the ITS strategy provides fuel savings over 30 times larger than all the construction phase strategies combined, and reduces carbon-dioxide emissions over 5 times more than any one of the construction-phase strategies. The article highlights ITSs effectiveness as a sustainability tool by comparing emissions and fuel use reductions to sustainable construction strategies. These results suggest that policies and rating systems for more sustainable roads should weigh ITS strategies considerably more than individual construction-phase strategies. The results also highlight the need for transportation policy to evaluate the benefits of all potential sustainable strategies to encourage implementation of the most effective ones.

Choice Architecture as a Strategy to Encourage Elegant Infrastructure Outcomes

AbstractInfrastructure that meets users’ needs with less complexity can satisfy growing demand and relieve system pressures. Such outcomes are defined as elegant. Unfortunately, social and cognitive biases can inhibit infrastructure stakeholders from achieving these outcomes. In other fields, similar biases are overcome with well-designed choice architecture, which considers how the presentation of choices effects the decisions that are ultimately made. Using a metasynthesis research approach, this article describes cognitive biases that can inhibit elegant infrastructure and then presents strategies to mitigate these biases with choice architecture interventions. The emphasis here is on high-impact decisions with cost-effective and plausible choice architecture interventions. This systematic merging of behavioral science and infrastructure systems is meant to provide readers with the background and examples needed to investigate choice architecture as a strategy to influence the infrastructure outcomes t...