The global concrete and construction industry’s growth has led to a shift in priorities, with a greater emphasis placed on sustainability. Hence, with technological advances, the concrete industry seeks additional cementitious materials to produce value-added products. By emphasizing the financial, ecological, and technological benefits of using fly ash as a partial cement replacement, the study constructed a framework which integrates the economic, environmental, and social pillars of sustainability through value engineering. Experimental results from 42 previous studies are analyzed and presented to underline the unique characteristics of fly ash concrete alternatives across five criteria (replacement, strength gain, compressive strength, slump, and permeability), showing how they differ from conventional concrete, and how they can be used to implement sustainable practices with positive financial outcomes. This study showed that the alternatives’ value gradually increases up to two times at 50% cement replacement. On the other hand, while the construction cost gradually increased to a peak of 19.69%, the life cycle cost went down by 41.45% at the same percentage. Thus, customers can emphasize the superiority of eco-friendly concrete while also highlighting the economic benefits, making it a more competitive option for them and expanding its market.
Quantitative assessment of emissions related to construction projects should be performed during the planning phase of the projects. This is significant to spot the high values of pollution during the construction phase. In this study, a model is developed to estimate pollution resulting from Buildings construction activities. The model calculates the generated pollution for each activity involved in the project as a result of dust, gases and noise emissions. A new index is developed namely Activity Pollution Index (API) which expresses the amount of total pollution for each activity during the project construction phase. Also, the developed model is able to display the resulted total pollution distribution throughout the project life that corresponding to the planned scheduling. An actual case study in an administrative building construction in Egypt is selected to demonstrate the practical use of the proposed model. The results show that the peak and minimum values of total pollution were occurred during the excavation activity and the formwork erections and steel fixing of the second segment of the building with values of API equal to 69 and 2, respectively.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.