Sustainable construction management: introduction of the operational context space (OCS)

Sustainable construction is an emerging field of science that aims at incorporating the general sustainable development concepts into conventional construction practices. While the foundation of knowledge in this field is continuously expanding, sustainable construction is not yet standard industry practice. One major technical barrier that hinders enacting sustainable construction is the absence of an application framework that integrates both sustainability and construction practices at an operational level. This shortcoming is being addressed through a three-dimensional operational context space (OCS) that achieves the sought integration aspect. The three dimensions of OCS are: (1) project life cycle phases; (2) project executing entities; and (3) sustainability performance parameters. Such OCS facilitates the association of responsibility, by assigning each sustainability requirement to a specific project entity (or entities) during specific project phase(s), and further provides a numerical assessment for construction projects using sustainability as a criterion. Steps of constructing the OCS and how it could be employed in the evaluation and benchmarking of a project's environmental performance are examined, along with sample illustrations in the area of construction waste management.