Scope of preconstruction services in green building projects

Abstract

The building construction industry is continuously experiencing significant changes in practice because of the rapid development of new technologies, methods and materials. The industry stakeholders, including designers, engineers and contractors, are often forced to develop and implement creative and non-traditional strategies to keep up with the new trends while staying efficient, effective and competitive. Sustainability and green building practices are good examples of such new trends which became focal points building construction projects in the last decade. In this transition, construction contractors expanded their capabilities beyond traditional project delivery methods. The majority of top green building contractors in the United States maintain significant experience and expertise in Construction Management at Risk delivery method. This type of delivery places large emphasis on preconstruction making it a vital process in green building projects. In addition, sustainability and green building trends added different attributes to the preconstruction process beyond the traditional services. This paper aims to explore the differentiating characteristics of preconstruction services in green building projects in comparison to the traditional project delivery. The paper highlights the new qualifications that are increasingly expected from construction companies during the green building projects' preconstruction process. The additional attributes and abilities that are expected from the contractors are summarized in the paper including the ability to analyze innovative technology scope, effective use of building information modeling related technologies, energy modeling analysis, fundamental knowledge of ecology, and building life cycle cost analysis. The discussions provided in this paper provide a structured framework to introduce the green preconstruction process in the classroom as well as a source for construction contractors to expand their services. © 2012 American Society for Engineering Education.