Closed-loop oriented project management in construction

Up to now, the construction industry is mainly characterized by open-loop material systems. Considering that dumping capacities are limited, land for landfill is reduced and natural resources have to be preserved, it is obvious that closed-loop material systems have to be established. Following the maxims of sustainability, these closed-loop systems have to respect technical, ecological and economic principles. Although much effort has been undertaken to develop recycling techniques for construction materials in the past years, the construction and recycling industry, especially the housing sector, still suffers from a lack of innovation in terms of sustainability. In this paper we show how the construction industry, as a major representative of the engineer-to-order industry, can make use of recovery concepts already widely spread in the manufacturing industry, e. g. reuse, refurbishing or recycling. Additionally, we reveal how advanced project management can be performed with respect to these recovery strategies by extending current project management approaches, which have mainly addressed time and cost efficient objectives in theory as well as in practice so far. In particular, we develop an approach for advanced construction management that integrates targets beyond time and cost to enable closed-loop material systems in the construction sector. By exemplarily showing how this approach can be applied to deconstruction processes we reveal how it contributes to sustainable, high performance buildings.