Benachio, G L F; Freitas, M D C D and Tavares, S F (2021) Interactions between lean construction principles and circular economy practices for the construction industry. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 147(7): 04021068, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
With the recurrent challenge of scarcity of resources in the world, the construction industry has been giving more attention to sustainability over the last decades, given that this industry is responsible for a big percentage of waste generated daily as well as a large amount of natural resources extraction. This high use of natural resources happens because the construction industry still uses the linear economy of "take-use-dispose,"which disposes a high amount of material in the end-of-life stage of a building. Opposed to that traditional process, the circular economy (CE) looks to better manage the building materials and consider them as valuable resources after the end-of-life of a building, reducing the amount of waste created. Similarly, the concept of lean construction (LC) looks to improve the value of the building, reducing waste, and improving productivity in construction, and has been studied since the nineties. Their synergies make their combination likely to bring benefits for the construction industry; however, this blend of concepts has not been extensively studied in the built environment, making it interesting to investigate it. The objective of this research was to find the interactions, positive or not, between the CE practices and the LC principles, using the method of content analysis to create a matrix of relationships that found a total of 74 interactions, 70 positive and 4 negatives. From these interactions, the LC principle of "reducing the share of non-value-adding activities"had the biggest number of interactions with CE practices, the practice of "off-site construction"had the biggest number of interactions with LC principles, and the construction stage was the life cycle phase that averaged the biggest number of interactions. Finally, it was possible to identify an optimal project sequence that took use of the CE practices that had the most LC principles incorporated into them.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | built environment; circular economy; lean construction; reversible building design; sustainable construction |
| Index terms: | built environment, building material, interaction, off-site construction, construction industry, synergy, building design, life cycle, circular economy practices, productivity, natural resource, circular economy, non-value-adding activity, lean construction, sustainable construction, content analysis |
| Subjects: | architectural design, data analysis and analytics, building materials, environmental resource management, value management, behavioral psychology, infrastructure and transport systems, industry analysis, building construction, partnership management, sustainable construction, sustainable design, management |
| Topics: | Construction Technology, Sustainability, Stakeholder Management, Research Practice, Project Management, Business Strategy, Site Management, Design Practice, Urban Studies |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here