Circular construction is an emerging paradigm aimed at addressing the sustainability concerns related to the construction industry. While technical and environmental aspects of circular construction receive ample attention, their economic dimension remains underexplored and is often limited to costs and micro-level factors, lacking a holistic perspective. In response, this study develops a multi-level conceptual framework to critically evaluate the economic and financial aspects of circular construction, through an Integrated Literature Review (ILR) of 45 academic and grey literature sources, complemented by interview data from actors involved in real-world circular construction projects. Four primary research clusters of economic and financial aspects are identified: (1) economic assessment methods, (2) benefits, barriers, risks, and enablers, (3) market guidelines and reports, and (4) circular business models. The findings reveal that economic and financial aspects are complex, extending beyond traditional cost and finance issues, and multilevel, shaped by supply chain dynamics, market forces and policy frameworks. As there is a high degree of interdependency among economic and financial aspects, any change can trigger cascading effects. Additionally, the study demonstrates how targeted interventions can mitigate multiple barriers and create positive feedback loops. The results contribute to the literature on the economic aspects of circular construction by broadening the traditional cost-focused approach and highlighting interconnected economic dynamics. Furthermore, the results advance the circular construction transition literature by illuminating relationships across multiple levels. Lastly, the study contributes to the literature on circular economy barriers and enablers by critically examining the underlying reasons behind existing barriers. By providing a structured approach to the economic and financial aspects of circular construction, the framework enables stakeholders to systematically identify and address barriers, costs, and uncertainties that often hinder its practical implementation. ... Read more

Circular construction is an emerging paradigm aimed at minimizing waste and reducing environmental impacts associated with the construction industry. To support this transition, building circularity indicators have been developed to assess the circularity of construction. While these indicators provide valuable insights into circularity, they lack the capacity to evaluate the environmental impacts of circular interventions. Addressing this gap, this paper presents a novel integration of the Whole Building Circularity Indicator (WBCI) with a comprehensive Cradle-to-Cradle Life Cycle Assessment (C2C-LCA), creating a unified WBCI-LCA framework for assessing circularity and Environmental Sustainability (ES) in circular construction. Applying the framework to a typical Dutch residential building and developing four circular scenarios, this study demonstrates how WBCI and C2C-LCA approaches can be effectively combined to examine the complex trade-offs between circularity and ES. The findings reveal that while increased circularity (from 0.309 to 0.488 in developed scenarios) reduces environmental impacts in most categories, it may also shift burdens across categories. For instance, biobased materials like CLT reduce global warming potential but increase eutrophication potential depending on the end-of-life scenario. This integrated approach demonstrates that WBCI and C2C-LCA effectively complement each other: WBCI captures essential circularity aspects like material circulation and component disassembly, while C2C-LCA provides insights into the environmental impacts of manufacturing, recycling, and transportation processes. These findings advance the literature on building circularity indicators by extending their applicability to C2C-LCA and contribute to the broader discourse on sustainability and circularity by providing empirical evidence on their interrelationship. ... Read more

The concept of Circular Economy (CE) has undergone a significant evolution, extending beyond the traditional 3R paradigm (reduce, reuse, recycle) to embrace a more holistic perspective that incorporates additional aspects. Previous research indicates the profound impact of circularity on the economic as well as the environmental domains of sustainability. Despite numerous efforts to integrate circularity metrics with established environmental and economic evaluation methods, a comprehensive framework that cohesively synthesizes circularity with both economic and environmental in a single unified framework is notably missing. To address this gap, this paper introduces the Cost of Circularity Assessment Tool (CoCAT), an innovative and integrated framework. CoCAT incorporates the Whole Building Circularity Indicator (WBCI) along with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) to simultaneously evaluate the economic as well as the environmental feasibility of various circular solutions. WBCI serves as the key metric on which the rest of the analysis is developed. The effective integration of WBCI with LCA has previously been demonstrated, and this study extends the methodology to encompass LCC through a rigorous literature review and critical analysis. The paper methodically explains this unified framework, aligning CE-based methodologies for all three assessments within the CoCAT in line with the existing standards. Additionally, it provides guidance on conducting integrated inventory analysis, combined interpretation, and visual representation of results, with a focus on whole-building level assessment. The research reveals that such integration streamlines the assessment process, saving time and effort. CoCAT can be used by stakeholders, companies and LCA practitioners to identify trade-offs between increased circularity and its impacts on sustainability performance (environmental and economic) for informed decision-making. ... Read more

Construction projects are complex endeavors where achieving higher quality standards is challenging due to the intrinsic difficulties and dynamic quality management processes. Several quality management techniques exist to overcome quality concerns, such as the cost of quality (COQ). However, implementing COQ in building construction is challenging due to the absence of a comprehensive quality cost-capturing system. Several studies have tried to quantify different quality costs but are mainly focused on visible failure cost—the tip of the iceberg while the base of the iceberg has rarely been explored. This study develops and quantifies each component of the visible and hidden quality costs—the base of the iceberg. Accordingly, a modified prevention, appraisal, and failure model is developed and applied to the primary data of 25 building projects. The findings highlight the unfamiliarity and passive attitude of the involved construction firms towards quality, thus, incurring higher failure costs amounting to over 12% of the total project cost. Most of this cost remains hidden as traditional accounting systems cannot capture it. Such costs must be eliminated by implementing COQ systems as utilized in the current study. Further, a quality costing framework is established for building projects and applied to the local construction industry to reduce construction failures and improve the quality performance of building projects. ... Read more

Circularity is finding its feet in construction. Several Building Circularity Indicators (BCIs) have been developed to measure buildings' Circular Economy (CE) potential, but none of them has been standardized. Currently, the BCIs methodologies lack consensus on CE definition and scope, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and various other technical aspects. New research is hardly building upon the existing works and this lack of incrementalism hinders the standardization process. The current research addresses these limitations by developing a comprehensive and innovative Whole-Building Circularity Indicator (WBCI). WBCI consolidates the existing advancements by including the best features of various methodologies (like VBCI, MCI, Flex 4.0, etc.) and covering a wide range of KPIs. It has been developed from a life cycle perspective, taking into account all material flows from the point of origin to disposal or waste treatment. The adopted methodology complements popular sustainability tools like Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The validation is done through a case study of a typical Italian residential building. WBCI along with an existing popular tool is applied to the case study using the actual building data to validate and highlight the improvements made in the developed framework. The building performed poorly in terms of circularity, scoring 0.243 on a scale of 0 (fully linear) to 1 (fully circular). It is found that resource-intensive construction processes and longer service life can substantially affect CE performance. Recommendations for improving the building circularity are given. From the methodological point of view, results emphasize that WBCI is a multilevel framework capable of identifying the best-performing CE solution at the material, element, system, and whole-building levels. Contractors, consultants, and policymakers may leverage WBCI's features to assess the circular performance of buildings at early stages. Researchers can also use the findings to further expand and standardize the BCIs. ... Read more

The circular economy (CE) paradigm can eradicate the problems caused by the traditional linear economic approach adopted by the building industry. But the efforts to implement CE in the building and construction industry are fragmented and lack consensus. If improved, the ability to measure and report on progress can help in effectively transiting to CE. In this regard, wide-ranging building circularity indicators (C-indicators) have been proposed. However, the extant literature highlights that the comprehensive research on existing CE assessment tools in the building industry is still lacking, while policymakers (e.g., European Commission) and standards (e.g., ISO) have emphasized the need for a universally recognized circularity framework for buildings. To help this cause, this review inventories and critically analyzes 35 existing tools through an extended systematic literature review of 51 carefully selected documents from both academic and grey literature. It is found that there is a sharp increase in publications in recent years, with Europe leading the way. Along with the academic community, government agencies and consulting companies have also developed several C-indicators. The content analysis suggests that most indicators are quantitative and can vary in terms of the scale of application, the adopted CE scope and definition, and the underlying key performance indicators (KPIs). The descriptive analysis reveals that most indicators are in the developing stage and substantially stress recycling and reuse, overlooking some important aspects like energy, emission, and water. Innovative technical solutions like the design for adaptability and disassembly are excessively used to measure the circular potential of structures. The existing sustainability and circularity tools are seen as a good starting point for developing new frameworks. This extensive review and critical analysis provide a synthesis and explanation of the developing research theme of building C-indicators and highlight the remaining key challenges. The findings can drive the standardization of a universally accepted framework. ... Read more

Construction projects are capital -and labour- intensive with complex financial profiles. Due to this inherent complexity, construction projects are adversely affected by corruption, especially in underdeveloped countries. To emphasize the seriousness of the issue and to eradicate corruption in construction projects, a comprehensive understanding of the effects of corruption is needed. Therefore, the current study examined the impacts of corruption on public infrastructure projects (PIPs) in the corrupt context of a developing country. 27 impacts of corruption were identified through an extensive literature review and expert interviews. To rank these factors, a structured questionnaire survey was carried out to collect empirical data from different contractual parties working in various construction projects in Pakistan. The results demonstrated that corruption is widespread in the local construction industry and has harmful impacts on projects and society in the forms of the creation of monopoly, increased procurement and maintenance costs and lower-quality products. The results also revealed that the construction community believes that corruption is beneficial in that it reduces time delays and can motivate workers. The findings of the study contribute to an in-depth understanding of the consequences of corruption in public infrastructure projects. This information would be useful for project personnel, stakeholders and engineering society to enhance awareness among the parties for eradication of corruption in construction. ... Read more