Developing a building construction associated social cost estimation system for Turkish construction industry

Purpose - Construction projects, especially in the urban areas, generate serious environmental nuisances for the adjacent residents. Construction causative adverse impacts on the neighbouring communities are known as the social costs. The amount of social cost changes from country to country depending on the applied building code of practices and building permission regulations. If the relevant code of practice is mandatory or the regulations are strict, contractors inherently will pay more attention to obey them and the occurrence of the social cost is less likely. However, in many especially developing countries, like north Cyprus and Turkey, those rules are either not existing or loose and in this case high amount social costs are caused by the contactors. The presence of the social costs are broadly embraced in theory however, they are not predominantly applied yet during project initial cost estimation practices. One of the reasons for that is, the social costs are rather complicated to measure and quantify due to lack of a paradigm for practice that guides the professionals on how to classify and assess them in the most applicable way possible. Thus, this research aims to develop a generic a social cost estimation system for Turkey and North Cyprus construction industries which assists to identify the social cost drivers, to estimate the social costs on the basis of the identified drivers, to incorporate social cost into project initial cost and to compensate it for the third parties. In this system, the contractors will be enforced to minimize the nuisances of the people residing around a construction site. Otherwise, the contractors will be forced to compensate them through a bonding system. Design/Methodology/Approach – the research adopts a triangulation strategy adopting multi-method approach in tackling the social cost phenomenon through a rigorous research process. For example, through comprehensive literature review, the research identified the social cost impact types; social cost components are established by the focus group through brainstorming sessions, and observations and self-experience in case study projects either via site visits or participating in the case study projects; the enumeration of the qualitative components of the social costs are obtained via questionnaire based survey. Findings – The segmentation of the social costs are evaluated as the impacts on house, household and neighbourhood. A total of 17 perceivable nuisance criteria are defined for those segments. The enumeration of all perceivable nuisance criteria is implemented where the estimated total social cost can be generated by using them. Practical implications – It paves a solid foundation for the professionals in the Turkish construction industry to perform precise building construction associated social cost estimations. Originality/value – This research provides sound and sequential system to estimate and compensate social costs for building constructions in the residential areas of developing countries. Keywords – Social cost, construction adverse impacts, building construction nuisance criteria, Turkish construction industry, and quantification of the social costs.