A System Dynamics - Based Economic Performance Simulation of Construction Waste Reduction Management: Effective Application of Prefabrication

Abstract

Cost effective management of construction and demolition waste (C&DW) has become a serious issue with increased construction activity and modern urban lifestyle which is damaging environment, eating up resources and causing rapid land use changes. These factors have influenced the construction industry significantly and therefore gained the practitioners' attention in recent past. New strategies of C&DW reduction management are being devised and reported; this research aims at providing a better C&DW management technique which will benefit the construction industry in terms of waste reduction and consequent cost-benefit. The main focus of this research is restrained to prefabrication of construction material and its effects on economy of tall buildings. The data collected from traditional methods for CDW management and prefabrication factories is based on interviewed surveys from project managers, quantity surveyors and experienced site managers. The collected data is then processed into System dynamics using "VENSIM PLE" by creating causal relationships with dependent and independent variables. Economic theory in contrast with conventional and prefabrication methods of construction has been incorporated in this study. Results show that usage of prefabrication technique proves to be more economical in managing C&DW. Construction waste management through prefabrication technique shows a reduction of cost around 79% as compared to that in construction through conventional methods. This suggests that prefabrication technique can considerably reduce C&DW as well as costs for its management accordingly.

Stakeholder-Associated Factors Influencing Construction and Demolition Waste Management: A Systematic Review

“…In addition, off-site construction and precasting or prefabrication technologies, which produce building components in off-site factories, have been found to considerably reduce construction waste [136,171,172], despite disadvantages relating to lower flexibility with manufacturing and transportation problems [173]. Using reusable temporary work, such as metal formwork, can also reduce waste [137].…”

A bibliometric review of zero waste in the built environment using VOSviewer: evolution, hotspots, and prospects

“…In addition, the study highlights prefabrication as a key strategy for waste reduction in the construction process. Prefabrication is a method of manufacturing building components in a factory and then assembling them on-site (Maqsoom et al, 2019). This is sometimes called "off-site construction" or "industrialised construction".…”

Endüstriyel Katı Atık Geri Dönüşümünün Sürdürülebilir Tedarik Zinciri Performansı Üzerindeki Etkilerinin Analizi için Bir Sistem Dinamiği Çerçevesi

“…Alamerew and Brissaud (2020) applied system dynamics to evaluate the effects of vehicle batteries, Chaudhary and Vrat (2020) applied system dynamics to evaluate the effects of mobile phone waste, Beiler et al (2020) applied system dynamics to evaluate the effects of glass waste recycling on the sustainable supply chain performance of the business in terms of various dimensions. Despite these studies in recent years, there are major research gaps in analyzing waste management studies with system dynamics (Micky, 2019;Maqsoom et al, 2019;Chen and Liu, 2021). In this study, a system dynamics approach is proposed for the model that shows the effect of recycling industrial wastes on performance.…”