An Index for Assessment of Onsite Waste Management Performance in Indian Construction Sites

Abstract

AbstractThe management of waste produced during construction, remodeling and demolition is challenging. Therefore, there is an emerging need to develop tools for evaluating the construction waste management (CWM) performance. In the current article, an index system is devised to assess the onsite construction waste management performance of the construction projects. An aggregation method used to formulate the onsite construction waste management performance assessment (OCWMPA) index is a weighted linear combination. A total of 32 variables and five categories are identified. Questionnaire survey and case studies are used to assess the index, from which (i) relative importance index (RII) to rank the corresponding factors, (ii) category weightages and (iii) OCWMPA index are calculated. The analysis results conclude that among all the variables, (i) ‘usage of RRR (reduce, reuse, recycle) strategy’ is the top ranked variable with RII of 0.786 and (ii) among the five categories, ‘construction method and planning’ has the highest category weightage, i.e. 0.286 and (iii) based on the index system, one among five construction projects displayed ‘excellent performance’ towards construction waste management with an index value of 847. The proposed OCWMPA index will enable project managers and engineers to identify and rectify significant deficiencies in the implementation of CWM onsite.KeywordsConstruction waste managementOnsite index systemRelative importance indexPerformance assessment