Assessing sustainability performance of built projects: a building process approach

Existing environmental performance assessment approaches focus on the overall performance to reflect sustainability of built projects. However, the impacts caused by construction activities on the environment occur throughout a project's life cycle which may be different at different stages. Similarly, the economic benefits and social impacts from implementing a construction project may also be different in different project stages. This paper presents a model of the sustainable development value (SDV), which integrates sustainability assessment into the building process. SDV measures the significance of the concerned project to the attainment of sustainable development value at different stages of a building life cycle, and the SDV at each stage will be amalgamated into the model of sustainable development ability (SDA). SDA is used as a prototype to demonstrate the extent of sustainable performance to aid decision making. This paper presents the methodological framework of SDV and SDA, and the implementation was demonstrated using a case study.