Increasing Sustainability of the Construction Industry through Resource Efficient Transportation and Production
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2024) | Viewed by 12301
Special Issue Editors
Interests: sustainability; circular flows; construction logistics; urban development; supply chain management; supply chain planning
Interests: operations strategy; supply chain management; digitalization and digital transformation, all related to the construction sector
Interests: construction logistics
Interests: productivity and sustainability in the construction industry; waste management; performance measurement; digitalization
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The purpose of this Special Issue is to present ongoing research on how to increase sustainability through resource efficient transportation and production in the construction industry. The construction industry accounts for 13% of gross domestic product (GDP) globally and employs 7% of the world’s working population (Barbosa et al., 2017), while suffering from low productivity growth rates and being harmful to the environment. On construction sites, workers spend 15% of their time moving equipment and materials to the assembly areas (Strandberg and Josephson, 2005), and transportation by hand represents 43% of the logistics cost (Wegelius-Lehtonen, 2001). The lack of proper logistics management, i.e., poor management of materials, equipment and tools, leads to deficiencies in productivity through low value-adding times (Almohsen and Ruwanpura, 2011).
While construction projects contribute to more attractive, sustainable, and economically viable urban areas, a vast amount of construction materials needs to be delivered to sites. According to Guerlain et al. (2019), a typical construction site receives 2–10 deliveries or 8–10 tonnes of material per day. Furthermore, construction-related transport accounts for at least 30% of all urban freight transports (Guerlain et al., 2019) and is a major contributor of the GHG emissions for construction projects (Akan et al., 2017, Ji et al., 2018). In a recent study, Sezer and Fredriksson (2020) have shown that the transport part of the emissions from a construction project is about 10% of the total emissions. With urbanisation, the amount of construction transports, and its related disturbances, is likely to increase (Deloison et al., 2020). Thus, the ineffective management of construction transports can increase both the costs and the environmental harm of construction projects (Sezer and Fredriksson, 2021).
There are several ongoing initiatives to improve sustainability of construction transports and productivity, such as 1) the use of construction logistics setups (CLS) (Janné and Fredriksson, 2021), 2) simulation studies of how to improve coordination between production and transport (Fredriksson et al., 2021), and 3) the possible impacts of digitalization (Stoyanova, 2020). However, there is a lack of spread of these results in the urban planning and the construction industry, and therefore the actual impact of how these initiatives increase sustainability through resource efficient transportation and production in construction is unclear. Therefore, in this Special Issue, we are looking for studies based on proof of concept or adoption in the industry, based on a wide variety of empirical research approaches including, but not limited to simulation, case based research, and surveys. We are also welcoming studies on project, portfolio, urban development and city level, focusing on the logistics to and from the construction areas, or on the construction site, in order to cover the complexity of the subject.
References
Akan, M. Ö. A., Dhavale, D. G. & Sarkis, J. 2017. Greenhouse gas emissions in the construction industry: An analysis and evaluation of a concrete supply chain. Journal of Cleaner Production, 167, 1195-1207.
Almohsen, A. & Ruwanpura, J. Logistics management in the construction industry. Proceeding of the International Council for research and Innovation in Building and construction (CIB), 2011 Sophie Antipolis, France. 10.
Barbosa, F., Woetzel, J. & Mischke, J. 2017. Reinventing Construction: A Route of Higher Productivity. McKinsey Global Institute.
Deloison, T., Hannon, E., Huber, A., Heid, B., Klink, C., Sahay, R. & Wolff, C. The Future of the Last-mile Ecosystem: Transition Roadmaps for Public-and Private-sector Players. 2020. World Economic Forum.
Fredriksson, A., Nolz, P. C. & Seragiotto, C. 2021. A mixed method evaluation of economic and environmental considerations in construction transport planning: The case of Ostlänken. Sustainable Cities and Society.
Guerlain, C., Renault, S. & Ferrero, F. 2019. Understanding Construction Logistics in Urban Areas and Lowering Its Environmental Impact: A Focus on Construction Consolidation Centres. Sustainability, 11, 6118-6128.
Janné, M. & Fredriksson, A. 2021. Construction logistics in urban development projects – learning from, or repeating, past mistakes of city logistics? The International Journal of Logistics Management, ahead-of-print.
Ji, Y., Li, K., Liu, G., Shrestha, A. & Jing, J. 2018. Comparing greenhouse gas emissions of precast in-situ and conventional construction methods. Journal of Cleaner Production, 173, 124-134.
Seo, M.-S., Kim, T., Hong, G. & Kim, H. 2016. On-site measurements of CO2 emissions during the construction phase of a building complex. Energies, 9, 599.
Sezer, A. A. & Fredriksson, A. The transport footprint of Swedish construction sites. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 2020. IOP Publishing, 042001.
Sezer, A. A. & Fredriksson, A. 2021. Environmental impact of construction transport and the effects of building certification schemes. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 172, 105688.
Stoyanova, M. (2020), “Good Practices and Recommendations for Success in Construction Digitalization”, TEM Journal, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 42-47.
Strandberg, J. & Josephson, P.-E. What do construction workers do? Direct observations in housing projects. Proceedings of 11th Joint CIB International Symposium Combining Forces, Advancing Facilities management and Construction through Innovation, 2005. 184-93.
Wegelius-Lehtonen, T. 2001. Performance measurement in construction logistics. International Journal of Production Economics, 69, 107-116.
Dr. Anna Fredriksson
Prof. Dr. Martin Rudberg
Dr. Micael Thunberg
Dr. Ahmet Sezer
Dr. Mats Janné
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- circular flows
- construction logistics
- construction supply chain
- productivity
- resource utilization
- service management
- sustainability
- transport emissions
- urban development
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