Sustainability as a Target Value to Strengthen Decarbonization in the Built Environment!

Our time is characterized by climate changes that impose sustainability in every industrial activity, an additional objective to our design and construction processes. Although the concept of value may be defined in various ways, often understood as the fulfilment of the client’s functional needs, and of the financial objectives of all involved actors. This understanding of value entails the set-up of project objectives like low production costs, optimized production flow, waste reduction, alignment of design and production, and pull production planning. These objectives remain within the technical realms of engineering and construction and are widely acknowledged as fundamental to achieving high levels of efficiency and quality in the AEC industry.

Accordingly, sustainability has become a watchword for professionals in the built environment. Everyone (upstream to downstream) actors are well-aware of the need to consider the long-term environmental impact. Yet, it’s the building owners who pay for sustainable features in buildings, and at times, they ask if it’s worth it. This is equally true of existing buildings – should they invest in sustainability? New-build projects are increasingly required by legislation to meet higher targets on energy efficiency and carbon emissions, so sustainability is now ‘baked in’ to a large extent. But meeting today’s targets should be regarded as a baseline. With net zero 2050 firmly in its sights, the government is pushing harder and faster on lifting targets – why aim for ‘just enough’ when a building owner is likely to face the cost of carbon emissions and upgrades in a few years?

In our times, climate changes impose the objective of sustainability on all of us, in every industrial activity, as a new objective to our design and construction processes. Although sustainability is an easy objective to embrace, work practices and tools are yet to be fully developed to secure a sustainable design/production process and a sustainable final product. This research study intends to question how sustainability can be an explicit goal of a construction project – and how can the design of modern buildings set up to support sustainability goals such as “the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions”. Furthermore, the study intends to explore methods, tools, and practices aimed at consolidating “carbon” as an element of sustainability in the construction design process.

This study proposes to extend the classic range of objectives pursued by the Lean construction approach, as to include sustainability in design and costing process, in a systematic and structured way. This would require a case study to be analysed. In early design stages, advanced structural design tools are used to explore and calculate embodied carbon in construction. The levels of embodied carbon following each of the many possible, alternative solutions would be estimated. These will provide the client insights during early stages of design and costing process – and through these practices owners and investors can add sustainability targets to the classical project targets (cost, quality, time), and include sustainability as a part of the fulfilment of the client’s functional needs.

Research in this topic can derive into multiple possible PhD avenues, using either qualitative or quantitative research, at organisational (e.g., level of interactions during design and cost related decisions, associated risks, etc) or operational level (e.g., software to help spot the level of effectiveness).