Time, Cost, and Environmental Impact Analysis on Construction Operations

Abstract

Environmentally conscious construction has been a subject of research for decades. Even though construction literature involves plenty of studies that emphasize the importance of environmental impact during the construction phase of a project, most of them were not focused on better understanding the relationship among project performance criteria in construction especially including environmental impact. Due to the multi-objectives nature of construction projects and the lack of understanding of such relationship, it is important to have a method for construction professionals to select optimal construction solutions when environmental impact is considered as an additional performance criterion. This paper presents a framework to determine optimal solutions based on project time, cost and environment impact (TCEI). Life cycle assessment was applied to the evaluation of environmental impact in terms of global warming potential (GWP). Genetic algorithms were used for time, cost and environmental impact optimization. A case of study was used to illustrate the application of the framework. Such framework can be applied to the planning of construction projects.