TAKTING THE SUSTAINABILITY OF CONSTRUCTION PROCESSES: AN ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT METHOD

Abstract

The building sector is key to achieving global sustainability targets due to its significant resource consumption, associated emissions, and waste generation. Life cycle assessment (LCA) evaluates the environmental quality of buildings to identify improvement possibilities. However, current research activities limit their focus on a few life cycle phases, while the construction phase receives none to little attention. At the heart of the problem lies the lack of information about on-site processes and the lack of tools to evaluate the environmental quality of construction processes. The authors developed a conceptual framework to assess this aspect using an interdisciplinary approach. The proposed solution is based on two main methods, namely LCA and Takt Planning (TP). Based on literature research we identified the main categories for environmentally relevant in- and outputs of construction processes. This allows a structured, standardized, and scalable assessment of each single process step from an environmental perspective We anticipate this method to be a starting point for a holistic sustainability approach for construction process assessment. Further development of this framework aims to broaden the current environmental evaluation in the building sector and to improve both, the construction process and the building product from an environmental point of view.