Criteria in Building Material Selection and The Role of Sustainability

Abstract

Buildings have become the focal point of sustainability because they consume large amounts of natural resources, especially materials and energy, and produce waste throughout their life cycle. Efforts to make buildings sustainable begin with the sustainability of the materials that govern most of the construction management process. In this study, an attempt was made to determine the importance levels of the criteria to be considered in the sustainability of building materials. For this purpose, a survey study was conducted to evaluate the importance of 25 criteria, grouped under the headings of environmental, social, and economic criteria, in terms of sustainability. The survey was conducted with the participation of 50 people from different professions and with different demographic characteristics, and whether participant opinions differed according to demographic characteristics was examined through inferential analyses. The inferential analyses revealed that the views differed for the work experience and only on economic criteria, and that there was no differentiation according to gender, age, education level and profession. For this reason, it was decided that the results could be generalized, and the relative importance values of the criteria were determined. While water conservation ranks first among all criteria, including environmental, accessibility among social criteria and long-term savings among economic criteria have been determined to be the most important criteria. The results revealed which criteria should be taken into consideration in the sustainability of building materials in order to make the construction industry more sustainable. In this respect, it is evaluated that the study will be a guide for governments, local governments, building material manufacturers, designers, contractors and ultimately users.