Sustainable Construction: An Information Modelling Approach for Waste Reduction

Construction waste is considered as a major contributor of solid wastes in municipal landfills. Construction, renovation, and demolition (CRD) waste generated by the Canadian construction industry accounts for 27% of total municipal solid waste disposed in landfills. However, many researchers stated that 75% of what the construction industry generates as waste has a residual value and therefore recycled, salvaged, and/or reused. With the same philosophy, municipal landfill facility of the city of Vancouver and Kelowna, Canada restricted the acceptance of construction waste. In such circumstances construction waste has to go for recycling, which is as costly as to go for new material. Sustainable and practical solutions then have to: 1) maximize the reuse of construction waste during the project construction phase, and 2) optimize the material usage of the „proposed construction‟ in the design phase itself. To achieve both of these objectives, real-time information system that can forecast potential waste of given project/s with material properties, cost, time, life cycle, and manufacturer specifications is required. Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a relatively new and much unexplored area in construction waste management, which has immense potential with today‟s computing power and technology. BIM can be used to optimize construction material use (and reuse) by micromapping construction lifecycle with virtual resource management. An optimized building model can be obtained by simulating the objects and spaces in the BIM with a novel use of dynamics modeling techniques and multi-criteria decision making methods. In addition, the proposed system dynamics modeling approach allows real time optimization of material discrepancies due to changes in the scope of construction projects. BIM as a virtual construction tool, integrated with project scheduling tool and proposed simulation technique, will facilitate waste minimization, right at the source, and allows construction managers to pre-plan sustainable construction by reusing waste material throughout the project lifecycle.