sustainability risks assessment in early stages of construction: Perspective of Environmental sustainability risks.

1.     Introduction:

1.1.                       Background and Rationale:

Considering the complex nature of project and presences of risks, the risks management plays pivotal role in achieving project’s objectives (Wu and Zhou, 2019; Qazi et al., 2020). (Ahmad et al., 2019) Optimisation of performance measures like cost, time and quality significantly benefits the stakeholders and promotes the sustainability. Environmental Sustainability risks can also be viewed as a performance measures and explored through the lens of Risk management to prioritise the associated risks (Wu et al., 2019).

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The long-term influence of sustainable practise on society, sustainability is gaining a more interest from researchers and practitioners. Comparing to general traditional risks, sustainability risks are unique and seldom be found on risks matrices and checklists. It has a wide range of probability and impacts considering newness, evolving and complicated nature of sustainability related risks (Guan et al., 2020).  (Wang et al., 2020). considering this nature there is a great need to develop a systematic method to manage and assess the risks in built environments while being in line with requirements of society and sustainability (Murtagh et al., 2020).

Sustainable construction refers to attaining financial, social, and environmental sustainability throughout the lifecycle of buildings (Bowen and Hill, 1997). Referring to several literatures’ sustainability management focus on planning, monitoring, and controlling project delivery from early stages in construction. The process involves the identification of sustainability related risks and updating the project to face these problems based on social, environmental, and economic principles of sustainability (Yu et al., 2018). This paper will examine about the sustainability related risks from environmental principles that can be identified and assessed on early stages of construction project.

Increasing awareness of environmental sustainability, construction firms are opting to decrease negative ecological issues, reducing construction waste, reduce toxication while increasing high constructability performance (Zhong and wu, 2015; Malik et al., 2019). Statistics shows that construction industry and buildings contribute towards unsustainable development, by negatively impacting environment and ecology (Pulselli et al., 2007).

Construction industry generates about 35% of global CO2 and produces upto 50-65% of wastes in landfill and harmful emission like greenhouse gases (30%) during construction process (AlSanad,2015). Construction industry can significantly contribute to environmental sustainability as it is a primary generator (Qazi et al., 2020). Opoku et al., (2019) found adopting environmental sustainability is associated with risks like lack of knowledge, initial budget, external pressures, and technological difficulties. All these uncertainties related to adopting environmental sustainability is the major theme of this paper and will be discussed later.

Risk management of construction projects are widely researched, and risks management framework has been established in several literatures (Qazi et al., 2019; Szymański, 2017; Zou et al., 2017; Taroun, 2014; Zhang etal.,2007). Qazi et al., (2019) explains the broad scope of risks and issues like project delays, failure of structures, cost overruns caused by several reasons like design inadequacy, bad choice of materials, insolvency of operatives and poor management. Meanwhile, comparing to sustainability related risks there is still a gap and very less risk management framework has been introduced. Risks related to sustainability is challenging because risks arise upfront while value comes later in time. Due to this nature, early identification and assessment of risks and contractor’s willingness to adopt new mindset and methods in construction is vital to eliminate impacts on environment and natural resources (Ismael and Shealy, 2018). This paper is solely focused on this theme of identifying and assessing the risks on early stages of construction that endangers environmental sustainability.

Therefore, there is a great need to develop a risk prioritisation method to assess environmental sustainability risks` as there is greater uncertainties associated compared to traditional risks. Earlier the risks are identified its better to plan an effective risk assessment technique. So, this paper is focused to identify risks and uncertainties that may arise while adopting environmental sustainability principles in early stages before construction. The proposed method analyses the assessment of probability and impacts of environmental sustainability related risks and prioritise them according to the risk score for risk assessment.

2.     Aims and objectives:

3.      Literature Review:

• Major Literatures to be discussed.

Key Subject area:	Topic	Authors
Risks in sustainable construction	Prioritizing risks in sustainable construction projects using a risk matrix-based Monte Carlo Simulation approach	Qazi et al.
Environmental risks	Improved project control for sustainable development of construction sector to reduce environment risks	Malik et al.
Sustainable construction	Awareness, Drivers, Actions, and Barriers of Sustainable Construction in Kuwait	Shaikha AlSanad
Sustainable project planning	Integrating Sustainability into Construction Engineering Projects: Perspective of Sustainable Project Planning	Yu et al.
Sustainable risk management	Sustainable risk management in the construction industry: lessons learned from the it industry	Hwang et al.
Risk assessment	Risk assessment and allocation in the UAE construction industry	Sameh Monir El-Sayegh
Risk management	Managing Risk in Construction Projects and Sustainability: Evidence from Malaysia	Nasruddina and Mustapha
Sustainable construction	Sustainable Construction Risk Perceptions in the Kuwaiti Construction Industry	Dalya Ismael and Tripp Shealy
Sustainability and risk management	Creativity, sustainable design, and risk management	Carmela Cucuzzella
Key risks in construction	Understanding the key risks in construction projects in China	Zou et al.
Risk management	Risk management in construction projects	Paweł Szymański
Construction risk assessment	Towards a better modelling and assessment of construction risk: Insights from a literature review	Abdulmaten Taroun
Sustainability and improved quality	Managing the building design process for sustainability and improved quality	Joseph A. Fadamiro, Sunday Bobadoye
Sustainability indicators	A methodology to identify sustainability indicators in construction project management—Application to infrastructure projects in Spain	Gonzalo Fernández-Sánchez ∗, Fernando Rodríguez-López
Green buildings	Green Building Construction Projects in Singapore: Cost Premiums and Cost Performance	Hwang et al.
Environmental sustainability	Barriers to environmental sustainability of construction projects	Opoku et al.
Risk and uncertainty assessment	Mapping Uncertainty for Risk and Opportunity Assessment in Projects	Qazi et al.
Risk management using BIM	A review of risk management through BIM and BIM-related technologies	Zou et al.
Sustainability assessment	Categorising tools for sustainability assessment	Ness et al.

Relating to the research gap and objectives mentioned, literature review will be carried out on above mentioned literatures and other literatures as required.

The main theme on literature review will be containing topics like and might be questions addressing for dissertation’s literature review:

• Risks in sustainable construction
  • Environmental Sustainability:
  • Environmental sustainability from the lens of Risks management:
  • Risks identification on early stages before construction (RICS)life cycle.
  • Risk prioritisation/ assessment/ Risk score.  
  • Future and Risk management using BIM (if suitable?)

1.  

 

4.     Methodology:

Identification of risks and prioritisation of Environmental sustainability related risks from the secondary sources. Major findings would include:

1. Type of risks present on early stages of construction.
2. Methods to find out probability, impact and risks score.
3. Graph representation of impactness and livelihood.
4. Allocation of risks.

Further methodology is to be discussed.

5.     Results and discussion:

Major outcomes from the methodology will be discussed on this chapter.

6.     Conclusions:

7.     References:

1. Ahmad, T., Aibinu, A.A., Stephan, A. and Chan, A.P., 2019. Investigating associations among performance criteria in Green Building projects. Journal of Cleaner Production, 232, pp.1348-1370.
2. AlSanad, S., 2015. Awareness, drivers, actions, and barriers of sustainable construction in Kuwait. Procedia engineering, 118, pp.969-983.
3. Ismael, D. and Shealy, T., 2018. Sustainable construction risk perceptions in the Kuwaiti construction industry. Sustainability, 10(6), p.1854.
4. Opoku, D.G.J., Ayarkwa, J. and Agyekum, K., 2019. Barriers to environmental sustainability of construction projects. Smart and Sustainable Built Environment.
5. Yu, M., Zhu, F., Yang, X., Wang, L. and Sun, X., 2018. Integrating sustainability into construction engineering projects: Perspective of sustainable project planning. Sustainability, 10(3), p.784.
6. Wu, Y. and Zhou, J., 2019. Risk assessment of urban rooftop distributed PV in energy performance contracting (EPC) projects: an extended HFLTS-DEMATEL fuzzy synthetic evaluation analysis. Sustainable Cities and Society, 47, p.101524.
7. Qazi, A., Shamayleh, A., El-Sayegh, S. and Formaneck, S., 2020. Prioritizing risks in sustainable construction projects using a risk matrix-based Monte Carlo Simulation approach. Sustainable Cities and Society, 65, p.102576.
8. Szymański, P., 2017. Risk management in construction projects. Procedia Engineering, 208, pp.174-182.
9. Zou, Y., Kiviniemi, A. and Jones, S.W., 2017. A review of risk management through BIM and BIM-related technologies. Safety science, 97, pp.88-98.
10. Zou, P.X., Zhang, G. and Wang, J., 2007. Understanding the key risks in construction projects in China. International journal of project management, 25(6), pp.601-614.
11. Hill, R.C. and Bowen, P.A., 1997. Sustainable construction: principles and a framework for attainment. Construction Management & Economics, 15(3), pp.223-239.
12. Wang, Q., Zhao, D., Yang, B. and Li, C., 2020. Risk assessment of the UPIoT construction in China using combined dynamic weighting method under IFGDM environment. Sustainable Cities and Society, 60, p.102199.
13. Kivilä, J., Martinsuo, M. and Vuorinen, L., 2017. Sustainable project management through project control in infrastructure projects. International Journal of Project Management, 35(6), pp.1167-1183.
14. Murtagh, N., Scott, L. and Fan, J., 2020. VSI editorial-Sustainable and resilient construction: Current status and future challenges. Journal of Cleaner Production, p.122264.
15. Taroun, A., 2014. Towards a better modelling and assessment of construction risk: Insights from a literature review. International journal of Project management, 32(1), pp.101-115.
16. Pulselli, R.M., Simoncini, E., Pulselli, F.M. and Bastianoni, S., 2007. Emergy analysis of building manufacturing, maintenance and use: Em-building indices to evaluate housing sustainability. Energy and buildings, 39(5), pp.620-628.