Scheduling of deconstruction projects under resource constraints

In many countries a large part of the building stock will have to be maintained, renovated, rehabilitated or even removed in the next few decades. Although profitability will be one of the major requirements to be met when these works are carried out, there will be more and more emphasis on the environmental requirements to be respected. To make the modernization of the building stock more efficient, dismantling with the aim of producing high quality recycling materials at reasonable costs is a promising approach. This paper presents an integrated approach to deconstruction site management that focuses on both economic and environmental goals. As a first step, material flow management aims at the closed-loop recycling of various construction materials. In a second step, resource constrained project planning models are used to evaluate strategies for optimized deconstruction site management. The approach offers high flexibility and can be adapted readily to different conditions. Results show that time and cost for deconstruction can be reduced by more than 50%, together with recycling quotas of more than 90%. Even when resources are strictly limited or when strong budget and time restrictions have to be respected, tremendous improvements in deconstruction site management can be achieved.