Eighteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

In a time of increasing environmental awareness and growing reluctance to accept waste as a by-product, there is a need to identify new tool and processes to prevent the generation of construction waste. There is already a wide range of research on ‘end-of-pipe’ retrospective construction waste management practice, but there is very little endeavours to address waste reduction at source. Hence, this research, adopted a mixed method approach, to investigate current design managers’ practice to design out waste (DoW) and associated challenges and enablers. Architects were found to be falling well short of their perceived duty to DoW and main contractors were taking more of a lead on this than the literature suggested. Within the main contractors, design managers play a pivotal role in overseeing DoW implementation. However, the participating contractors acknowledged that complete project team effort is a critical in advancing DoW practice and innovation. However, the findings indicate the project specific variables such as contract type, project scale and value that dictate the involvement of design managers in a project have a significant impact in their DoW engagement and implementation. Furthermore, lack of training and failure to learn from previous projects were rated as the most significant DoW implementation barriers facing contractors.

Presenters

Mohamed Osmani
Professor of Sustainable Design and Construction , School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering, Loughborough University, United Kingdom