Incorporation of sustainability in construction project development

Abstract

Despite its importance for the functioning of society, the building environment is a major contributor the global GHG emissions. Although there is an increasing attention for the transition towards sustainability, this sector seems to struggle in realising this transition. As a result, environmental conditions are still exceeding (some of the) planetary boundaries. Moreover, for engineering organisations it is important to integrate sustainability into the project approach, in order to continue their business activities in the future. In order to improve the sustainable performance and stimulate the transition towards a zero-emission economy, literature suggests to study the missing link between formulation of corporate sustainable ambitions and vision (sustainability strategy) and the implementation on project level. This research responds to this suggestion, as it identifies the main barriers that hamper the implementation of sustainability strategy in engineering and consultancy organisations, and derive factors and activities that stimulate the application. As industrial ecology is described as the ‘toolbox’ for sustainability issues, this research considers this discipline and evaluates its application for the implementation of sustainability strategy. Besides the insights in the barriers, this research includes the results into a framework: the VOC framework. This framework stimulates the incorporation of sustainability (understood as implementation of sustainability strategy in this research) within construction project development. The starting point of the research is a background study, including literature on businesses, corporate strategy and sustainability in the building environment. Next to these aspects, a specific chapter will review the relevance of industrial ecology for the incorporation of sustainability, by focusing on three industrial ecology tools: Life Cycle Assessment, Industrial Symbiosis and Supply Chain Positioning. For the structure of this research, the methodology was divided into three phases: exploration, design and evaluation. Before the implementation of sustainability strategy in practice is investigated, the sustainable elements in the corporate sustainability strategy should be clear. Next, primary data is collected via case analysis. Within these cases, semi-structured interviews were conducted. In this way, both primary and secondary data is included in the analysis. The data analysis is part of the exploration phase. Within the design phase, barriers and stimulations together with perceptions of professionals were included in the VOC framework. As part of the evaluation phase, the conceptual framework was tested in a online focus group. The main barriers that are considered the starting point for implementation of sustainability are (1) communication with the internal project teams, (2) organisational support and (3) value creation out of sustainability. The results show how the three barriers on the corporate level are influencing all indirect limiting factors on the project level. On the project level, sustainability is in many cases considered a cost, without thinking about the value that is captured by sustainable interventions. To enhance this value creation, Life Cycle Assessment, Industrial Symbiosis and Supply Chain Positioning are integrated in the VOC framework as industrial ecology tools. VOC framework is not about applying the specific IE tools directly, but use the tools to inspire and convince the project owner on sustainable options in the project concept. In addition, sharing of experiences and best practices needed to be emphasised as crucial actions for the incorporation.