A critical review of circularity - ‘design for disassembly’ assessment methods applied in the development of modular construction panels - an Irish case study

Abstract

The construction and operation of buildings has a significant negative impact on the environment and is a major contributor to global warming. The EU has responded with a range of policy measures including targets to decarbonise the existing building stock and to promote circular economy principles in the built environment.The Drive 0 project aimed to demonstrate potential for such accelerated decarbonisation of the building stock using circular modularised solutions, which necessitated the development and application of circularity - design for disassembly assessment methods, undertaken at key stages during the life of the project, to aid design development and benchmarking of proposed solutions, which is an identified knowledge gap in research.This paper presents a critical review of the Drive 0 circularity - design for disassembly assessment methods applied in the development of the Irish modularised wall panel, providing case specific insights into the challenges and complexity of implementing and assessing circularity and design for disassembly in buildings, drawing from relevant literature in the field, and contributing to key retrofit, modularity and circularity research needs notably case specific application in construction.Key findings were limitations of the simplified method in relation to; scope and range of indicators, non-hierarchical consideration, focus and weightings, material aspects and impacts, re-application stages, definitions and terminology, all of which provide theoretical consideration into the complexity of assessing the multi criterion nature of circularity and design for disassembly in practice.The critical analysis undertaken contributes to this emerging field of knowledge and provides a basis for further research in this field toward developing a more holistic circularity - design for disassembly assessment framework.