Life-cycle assessment of construction errors on buildings in Greenland

Abstract

Life-cycle assessments are often performed on ideal cases where errors or accidents are not taken into account. This might give a wrong indication of the potential impacts as errors and accidents do occur as part of building construction. Thus, for a specific case in Greenland on construction of an exterior wall, we evaluated the potential environmental impacts of construction errors. Both impacts related to correcting the errors and impacts if the errors were left uncorrected. We compared our results to a baseline scenario without construction errors. Results show that construction errors can have a substantial contribution to the total life-cycle impact of an exterior wall. Our results are for a specific case and cannot be generalized at this stage. Further studies are needed to evaluate if findings can be generalized. Here, errors should generally be avoided through better quality assurance during planning and execution or by using more robust designs. This study sheds light on the importance of taking into account potential construction errors and the importance of avoiding these to keep environmental impacts low.