Life cycle environmental impact assessment to manage and optimize construction waste using Building Information Modeling (BIM)

Abstract The construction industry has become more interested in moving towards implementing an innovative method to reduce wastes and Environmental Impacts (EIs) during the construction stage. Tools and methods represented in different frameworks to estimate construction wastes are limited to the end of life stage of building projects. A common method employed for this quantification is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which is globally recognized as one of the most complete methods for the environmental impact assessment of buildings. Building Information Modeling (BIM) would be an ideal platform to integrate LCA to assist in this process. However, BIM and LCA tools are currently not fully interoperable. This research aims to represent a methodology to quantify total waste produced in the building’s lifecycle. The main reasons for producing waste are examined profoundly and some solutions leading to waste reduction are proposed. Additionally, the environmental impact of the materials converted to waste is evaluated in an integrated environment by developing an add-in inside BIM tool, which calculates waste produced in each step of buildings’ lifespan to be used by LCA tool. An application of an actual building project will be presented in order to illustrate the usefulness and capabilities of the developed approaches.