Citation for this paper:
Ghamsari-Esfahani, A. , Save, P.W. & Froese, T. (2011). State-of-Art Review of
Sustainability in Construction Management. Paper presented at CSCE 3rd
International/9th Construction Specialty Conference, Ottawa, ON.
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State-of-Art Review of Sustainability in Construction Management
A. Ghamsari-Esfahani, P. W. Save, and T. Froese
© 2011, Copyright, by the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering. With permission
from the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering.
This article was originally presented at the:
CSCE 3rd International / 9th Construction Specialty Conference
Ottawa, Ontario
June 14-17, 2011
3rd International/9th Construction Specialty Conference
le 3è Congrès international et 9e Congrès spécial du génie de la construction
Ottawa, Ontario
June 14-17, 2011 / 14 au 17 juin 2011
State-of-Art Review of Sustainability in Construction Management
A. Ghamsari-Esfahani, P. W. Save, and T. Froese
Department of Civil Engineering, University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, BC
Abstract: Construction management and sustainability have long been interlinked as it is well known that
construction affects people’s lives during building and throughout the lifespan of the completed works. This paper presents research carried out as a preliminary activity of a broader study of sustainable construction and infrastructure management practices. The scope of the study is sustainability issues relating to the construction process and construction management (not the construction ―product‖, i.e., green building design and technologies). An international selection of 14 journals was chosen to provide a diverse view on research on sustainability. In order to locate articles related to sustainability, the terms ―sustainable‖ and ―sustainability‖ were used to search for articles in each journal. This initial search rendered 1600 results, and after further analysis 141 relevant papers were identified and evaluated on over 30 attributes; these attributes also included the environmental, economic, and societal pillars of sustainability. The results suggest there has been limited research completed in the sustainable management of the early stages of infrastructure projects, i.e. scheduling and the construction process in order to deliver the project more sustainably. Additionally, the results suggest that not much research has been carried out related to linking the economic and societal pillars of sustainability. Overall, the authors provide a meta-analysis of the reviewed literature; identified trends, emerging areas of interest, and areas that may require further research.
1. Introduction
What is sustainability and when did it begin? Part of the answer to this question may lie with the beginnings of corporate social responsibility (CSR). According to the highly cited article ―Corporate Social Responsibility: evolution of a definitional construct‖ published by Archie B. Carroll, CSR began with articles respectively published by Barnard, Clark, and Kreps, in 1938, 1939, and 1940. (Carroll 1999) Although it would also seem that each decade after this time saw the exponential growth that has led to our current understanding of CSR. The CSR of today has become the social and economic pillars for sustainability; the other pillar being the environment.
Construction management and sustainability have long been interlinked as it is well known that construction affects people’s lives during building and throughout the lifespan of the completed works. CM can also carry heavy monetary costs with financial decisions influencing the social and environmental aspects of the project; and contributes significantly to CO2 emissions and other environmental impacts. This paper presents research carried out as a preliminary activity of a broader study of sustainable construction and infrastructure management practices. The scope of the study is sustainability issues relating to the construction process and construction management (not the construction ―product‖, i.e., green building design and technologies). The research starts with the premise that the current scientific literature provides a valid indicator of the current state of knowledge relating to sustainable construction
and infrastructure management. The research attempts to analyze the current literature to identify and obtain insight into the topics and issues involved in the sustainable construction and infrastructure management, and through an analysis of strengths, gaps, trends, etc. in the literature, obtain input to the development of a strategy for further research in this area. This paper focuses on the research methodology used to collect and analyze the literature, along with the presentation of the preliminary results.
We initially had focused our research on Journals from Canada and the USA, where nine of the 14 selected journals are published, with the remaining five journals being mostly based in Europe. These 14 journals were also chosen based on their merit for containing articles related to construction management. Our research was found to shift to more of an international context since the majority of the final articles selected for research were from international journals.
Candidate articles were located within the selected journals by searching for the terms ―sustainable‖ or ―sustainability‖. This initial keyword search rendered over 1600 articles. This set of articles was then manually filtered to identify those that addressed process or construction management issues from within the majority of papers that addressed construction products (e.g., building components that reduced environmental impacts). An initial filtering based on brief reviews of paper titles and abstracts reduced the set to 190 articles, which was further reduced to 141 papers after these papers were fully read and analyzed. The reasons for eliminating a further 49 articles was that the articles either did not actually directly pertain to sustainability or that they pertained to a construction product rather than a management aspect. For example, articles regarding the installation of new low power consuming HVAC systems were eliminated.
Articles were then evaluated based on bibliographic attributes (title of article, authors, journal name, year of publication, data origin, and research origin), content attributes, type of project (infrastructure, public buildings, and private buildings), stakeholder perspective (client, consultant, contractor, and government), research method (survey, case study, interview, literature review, and framework/model), area of application (planning, design, construction, operation, deconstruction, whole life cycle, theoretical, policy, and financing), and applicable pillars of sustainability (social, environment, and economic). Each attribute was assigned a binary value ―0‖ for no, and ―1‖ for yes, depending on its applicability to sustainability; with the exception of the pillars of sustainability which were assigned values from ―0‖ to ―5‖,ranging from low to high applicability to sustainability. Further details on the rating system for the pillars are outlined in Section 4.2.5.
Many articles found in this literature search explore both individual pillars of sustainable construction management as well as linkages between the pillars. It is perhaps the development of these linkages that will be found to be most interesting once the data analysis is completed. Further statistical investigation is still required to evaluate the data that has been obtained. The contents of this paper will outline the methodology of our research and present some preliminary findings.
2. Background
The first conference on sustainable construction management was held in Tampa, Florida, USA in 1994. (Hill et all 1997) Coincidentally it is also from 1998 that journal papers used for this research seemed to start flourishing, which coincides with the CIB hosting an international conference on sustainability in Gavle,Sweden (1998). When searching for the terms ―sustainability‖ or ―sustainable‖, there was only one article found for each of the years 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996, and 1997 that was related to construction management, but five articles were published in 1998. It is a goal of our research to provide a means for navigating through the vast literature that is currently available in journals, as well as to offer a methodology for analyzing the literature in order to cluster articles into relevant classifications.
As a literature review encompassing the progression of sustainability and construction management could not be located, it was decided that this may provide a useful activity. In the early stages of the literature review, one article identified which areas in construction management needed more research and gave
an overall view; that article was ―Sustainable development and the future of construction: a comparison of visions‖ (Bourdeau 1999). Also identified were many articles such as ―Sustainable construction: principles and a framework for attainment‖ (Hill and Bowen 1997) that provide methodologies for incorporating sustainability into construction management, or articles with insights into areas for improvement with life cycle assessment (LCA); however, articles which provided an overall view into necessary areas for future research were not found. By assembling a large sample of 141 articles and recording each article’s attributes, this work allowed a meaningful way to find trends in the literature and create classifications to cluster the articles into to be able to re-read articles as an entire cluster to further assess the development of each particular classification. At a future stage of this research the classifications that emerge and the progression in terms of sustainability will be analyzed to help determine further areas of research. Various frameworks for sustainability have been defined and employed in the literature, but the most common one is the one with three pillars of sustainability, i.e. Environment, Social, and Economic, as shown in Figure 1. This framework was adopted in the literature review completed for this research.
Figure 1: Three pillars of sustainability: environment, economic, social
3. Research Methodology 3.1 Journal Selection
As noted earlier, the journals selected for the review were chosen to give an overall view on sustainability in project and construction management with the end result being an international review. Although potentially more journals could have been included, after consulting with experts in project and construction management, it was concluded that the selection of the following journals below would provide a representative selection of potential articles:
Canada
Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering USA
ASCE Journal of Architectural Engineering
ASCE Journal of Construction Engineering & Management
ASCE Journal of Environmental Engineering
ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems
ASCE Journal of Management in Engineering
ASCE Journal of Professional issues in Engineering Education and Practice
ASCE Journal of Urban planning and development
ASCE Journal of Water resources planning and management International
Environment Economic
Building Research and Information
Building and Environment
Construction Management & Economics
Energy and Buildings
International Journal of Project Management
3.2 Article Selection
Following the selection of representative journals, an intensive web-based search was performed in each representative journal. The criterion for the article selection was that the terms ―sustainable‖ or ―sustainability‖ occur in the title, abstract or keywords of the paper. This search criterion identified more than 1600 articles in the representative journals.
The next stage of the article selection was more subjective and the selection criterion was that the article be generally related to construction and project management—or process aspects—of sustainability. Many of journal papers identified in this second stage of article selection focused on product technology for sustainability, which is not within the scope of this research; these were omitted from the final results. Overall, a total of 141 candidate journal articles were found that met both the objective and the subjective criteria of the search. Table 1 shows the number of candidate for each selected representative journal.
Table 1: Number of articles per selected journal
Journal Name
Totals % of Total
Building Research and Information 44
31%
Building and Environment 25
18%
Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering 18
13%
Construction Management & Economics 1611%
Energy and Buildings 8
6%
ASCE Journal of Construction Engineering & Management 6
4%
ASCE Journal of Professional issues in Engineering Education and Practice 64%
International Journal of Project Management 43%
ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems 4
3%
ASCE Journal of Urban Planning and Development 4
3%
ASCE Journal of Environmental Engineering 21%
ASCE Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management 21%
ASCE Journal of Architectural Engineering 11%
ASCE Journal of Management in Engineering 11%
Total Articles in Canadian Journal 18
13%
Total Articles in American Journal 26
18%
Total Articles in International Journal
97
69%
4. Initial Attribute Results 4.1 Bibliographic Attributes
The bibliographic attributes that were assigned to each article are those attributes extracted directly from the article; regardless of sustainability content and research methodology. These attributes are: title of article, authors, journal name, year of publication, researcher origin; and country of data origin. Figure 2 shows the data origin for articles. As noted earlier, most of the journals are based in North America; hence a significant portion of research data were based on Canadian and US construction practices, with the addition of the UK construction practices cited in international journal papers. As one will notice, ―Asia‖ and ―North America‖ are displayed even though Japan, China, Taiwan, Canada and the USA are also noted. Similarly, there is a separate ―global‖ category even though regions are mentioned. The larger geographical references are used when the data origin spanned more than just one country, or geographical region. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 A si a D en m ar k Eg yp t It al y Ja p an No rt h A m e ri ca P o la n d Po rt u ga l T ai wa n T u rk e y Fr an ce H o n g K o n g New Zea la n d Si n ga p or e Swe e d e n Swi tzer la n d Sp ai n A u st ra lia B ra zi l G er m an y Ne th er la n d s So u th A fr ic a C h in a G lo b al US A UK C an ad a
Number of Articles Per Country Related to Sustainability
Research in Project & Construction Management
#
Figure 2: Data origin of the articles
Figure 3 represents the number of journal articles published per year from 1990 until 2010. It can be seen from Figure 3 that significantly more articles related to sustainability and construction management were published in that last six years (2005-2010) than the previous thirteen years (1992-2004) combined. Moreover, it took around ten years from the first international conference on sustainable construction in 1994 before interest in the topic began to flourish.
Figure 3: Number of journal articles per year
4.2 Content Attributes
The content attributes were assigned more subjectively to the articles, and the individual attributes are not mutually-exclusive. For example, under the content heading ―stakeholder‖, there are four selections possible: client, consultant, contractor, and government. It would be possible for all the stakeholder’s perspectives to be selected. The selection of the content attributes was performed by the research team. 4.2.1 Type of Civil Project
Figure 4 shows the type of project that has been studied in the article—buildings (both private and public) and non-building infrastructure. This means that infrastructure buildings will be in the category of public buildings. As an example, hospitals would be classified as public buildings, while utilities would be under infrastructure. The figure shows both the non-mutually exclusive references to the different project types (solid histogram), as well as the number of papers that referred exclusively to either buildings or infrastructure projects (hatched histogram). The hatched histograms provide some insight as to what extent articles focused exclusively on buildings or non-building infrastructure. As non-mutual exclusivity perhaps best reference the content found, following sections of this review will not contain building and non-building infrastructure ―exclusive‖ results.
4.2.2 Stakeholder perspective
Stakeholder perspective is in reference to the party that stands to have significant impact from the project. As this can entail multiple parties these categories are not mutually exclusive. Figure 5 illustrates the stakeholder perspective that assigned by the research team for each article. Four main stakeholder perspectives were identified by the research team in their general analysis of the articles: client, consultant, contractor, and government.
In this figure; the stakeholders perspective have been shown for different classification from type of civil project attribute, like the method used in the articles related to private buildings, public buildings; and non-building infrastructure. The overall result without considering the type of civil project is also has been shown. For public projects, the client is typically a specific level of government; hence the attribute assigned would be both client and government. For other cases, where government was involved more in a policy-making process or public-survey, the attribute was just assigned as the government perspective. The general results in Figure 5 show that there fewer articles related to the contractor perspective on sustainable construction management, compared to client and consultant/architect. This may suggest an opportunity to carry out more exploration of the contractor’s perspective to find ways to change managerial thinking of contractors toward sustainability.
Figure 5: Number of articles for each stakeholders perspective 4.2.3 Research Method
Research method means the technique used to gather data or information for the research: (1) survey within the industry, (2) case study/studies of sustainability, (3) interviews with experts of the field, (4) literature review on specific sustainability topics, or (5) development of a model or framework for sustainability. These categories are also not mutually exclusive. The results suggest that the focus of sustainability research was more on developing theoretical frameworks or looking at previous research in the field, rather than using practical approaches and state-of-practice in the field of construction management.
Figure 6 identifies the techniques used to gather data or information for the research. Same as figure 5, the research methods have been shown for different classification from type of civil project attribute, and the overall result without considering the type of civil project is also has been shown.
Figure 6 : Number of articles for each research method used 4.2.4 Area of application
The ―Area of Application‖ includes the categorization of a particular phase of the construction life cycle, general topics such as policy and financing, and a ―theoretical‖ topic. Some of the articles have looked at the overall life cycle of the project, while others focused on one or two stages of its life. Additionally, the content of some articles may or may not be directly applied to a stage in the life cycle, but did focus on theoretical, policy, or financial aspects. Initially the research began with only Planning and Scheduling, Design, Construction, Operation, and Whole Life Cycle, while the other categories emerged as we read the articles. The result has shown relatively less research on the deconstruction stage; this can be partly due to this topic being a more recent topic of interest. For non-building infrastructure, specifically, it is clear that not much research has been performed on the early stage of projects, i.e. planning & scheduling, and construction. More focus of research at this stage has been on design, operation or looking at the whole life cycle of the infrastructure. Figure 7 shows the area of application, or the construction focus to which sustainability issues are applied.
4.2.5 Three Pillars of Sustainability – Social, Environmental, and Economic
As noted earlier, the goal of this research is to see how the links between the pillars have changed and the focus of research shifted over the years.
The following rating system was developed after preliminary analysis of a sample set of articles by the research team to assess the degree of focus and linkage for any of the three pillars of sustainability:
0. Article does not discuss a specific sustainability pillar.
1. Article focuses on other pillars, but shows a relationship with one pillar.
2. Article focuses on overall sustainability analyses rather than a specific pillar and discusses the current pillar equally with the others.
3. Article describes the relationship and interaction between one pillar and others. 4. Article focuses on one pillar and it explains its relationship to the other pillars. 5. Article focuses exclusively on one pillar.
The intent of the above rating system is to capture how much of a focus a particular pillar had as well as the extent to which relationships with other pillars are examined. In this regards, the pillars are not mutually exclusive, and one article may examine all three pillars and their relationships.
Preliminary result for the focus of all the 141 articles examined has been shown in Fig8. Each article has been assigned by a number and it has been located on the diagram of sustainability based on the above scoring system. This shows progress of articles in different aspect of sustainability. These preliminary results demonstrate the progress of research on the subject during years. It also shows that the focus of the research moves from focusing mainly on the environmental pillar of sustainability to focus more on all the three pillars, although environment is still is the main concern in the studies. This research is a work in progress and presents the results to date. Future detailed analysis will examine the temporal changes of the pillar focus in the articles in order to identify trends.
Figure 8: Distribution of articles during years (1993-2010), each number in the above figure is related to an article
6. Subject Groupings and Future Analysis
This paper has focussed on the methodology and preliminary findings of the literature analysis. Further analysis will continue to explore the collected attribute data, particularly the correlation between attributes, such as the changes in application areas over time to yield trend information. Moreover, additional analysis will carry out cluster analysis of the topic statements from each paper to develop a topic map that
describes the areas of emphasis of the collected articles and serves as an index into the literature sources. There will also be a comparison made between Bourdeau’s findings of areas needing more research in 1999, and the areas that appear to provide good opportunities for more research today. The final results will be used as input to the development of an overall research strategy for future work in the area of sustainable construction and infrastructure management.
7. Summary and Conclusions
141 candidate articles related to the union of ―construction management’ and ―sustainability‖ were identified, classified, and analysed according to a rigorous methodology
A set of attributes were assigned by the research team to each candidate article.
The distribution of the classification is presented and discussed.
Majority of the articles focussed on public and private buildings, with less focus on infrastructure.
The focus of stakeholder perspective was more on client and government perspective and not too many articles have talked about the contractor perspective on sustainable construction management.
There a large body of information gathered about sustainability in the design phase.
Deconstruction is a topic of research that has recently emerged
For non-building infrastructure, the articles look thoroughly at the operation phase. Planning & Scheduling and Construction had less focus during the last 20 years.
The environment was the most referenced pillar
Among articles discussing combined interactions, the social and economic link was the weakest with only 7 articles compared to 21 articles for the social and environment link, and 23 articles for the environment and economic link
Our future research on this topic will involve clustering the articles into relevant groups and assessing what areas of research are still needed within these groups.
8. References
Full detailed list of all 141 articles used in this review can be found in the link below:
http://tinyurl.com/UBCprojectsustainabilityCSCE11
Bourdeau, L. (1999). Sustainable development and the future of construction: A comparison of visions from various countries. Building Research & Information, 27(6), 354-366.
Carroll, A. B. (1999) 'Corporate Social Responsibility: evolution of a definitional construct’, Business &
Society, 38: 3, 268-295.
Hill, R. C. and Bowen, P. A. (1997) Sustainable construction: Principles and a framework for attainment.
Construction Management and Economics, 15(3), 223-239.
Kreps, T.J. (1940) Measurement of the Social Performance of Business, in An investigation of
Concentration of Economic Power for the Temporary National Economic Committee, (Monograph n.
