Palaniappan, S (2009) Environmental performance of on-site construction processes in post-tensioned slab foundation construction: A study of production home building in the Greater Phoenix area. PhD thesis, Arizona State University, USA.
Abstract
There is an increased movement in the construction industry towards sustainable development, understanding life-cycle environmental impacts and reducing carbon footprint. This research considers the environmental performance of on-site construction processes in the concreting phase of production home construction. This study presents a process-specific quantification of carbon emissions based on the transportation of construction crews, materials, and equipment in post-tensioned slab foundation construction, a foundation system widely used for production homes in the Greater Phoenix Arizona area. Post-tensioned slab foundation construction typically involves a concrete trade contractor, sub-trade contractors for grading aggregate base course (ABC) and post-tensioning, suppliers of ready-mix concrete, ABC and a concrete pump truck, a builder superintendent and code-compliance inspectors. This study includes multiple residential construction sites in the Greater Phoenix area, and consists of: (i) identifying all construction activities and the party responsible for each; (ii) collecting travel and fuel use data from trade contractors and through field observations; (iii) calculating CO 2 emissions for a generalized base case representative of the Greater Phoenix area and the relative contribution of various trades; (iv) studying the influence of material and equipment transportation; and (v) what-if analysis for material, equipment and crew transportation depending upon subdivision location, trade contractor location and home size. Further, CO 2 emissions of transportation in the framing phase, on-site equipment use and rework during the concreting phase are presented. The primary conclusions are: (a) ready-mix concrete transportation is a significant source of emissions in the concreting phase; other important components are transportation of the trade contractor crews and concrete pump truck; (b) the concreting phase and the framing phase are comparable in terms of transportation-based CO2 emissions even though these phases differ significantly in terms of cost and weight of materials transported; and (c) CO2 emissions for on-site equipment use are in the range of 6 to 12% of transportation-based CO2 emissions in the concreting phase. This research is valuable to home builders and specialty trade contractors who wish to measure their carbon emissions based upon on-site construction processes and compare environmental performance of different construction scenarios.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | carbon emissions; carbon footprint; residential; construction site; equipment; homes; compliance; environmental impact; sustainable development; builder; supplier; environmental performance; quantification |
| Index terms: | framing, builder, sustainable development, construction site, rework, movement, compliance, trade contractor, environmental impact, construction process, concreting, construction activity, aggregate, CO2 emissions, carbon emission, quantification, carbon footprint, environmental performance, construction industry, home building, residential construction |
| Subjects: | sustainability assessment, construction integration, health safety and environment, building construction, measurement and scaling, industry analysis, construction type, air quality, environmental impact, materials science, climate science, health behaviours and lifestyles, practitioner, operations management, work location, construction operations, conceptual models |
| Topics: | Research Practice, Business Strategy, Construction Technology, Roles and Professions, Site Management, Engineering Principles, Project Management, Health and Safety, Sustainability |
| 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