Sustainable construction is widely regarded as one of the best decisions to reduce the environmental impact of the buildings. Numerous scientific efforts have been devoted to promoting sustainability by adopting different techniques such as life cycle assessment (LCA) and building information modeling (BIM). The recent circular economy (CE) agenda is prioritizing in different sectors including construction due to increasing concern on the materials efficiency and resources consumption. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the implications, considerations, contributions and challenges of BIM integrated LCA and the CE adoption in the industry by critically analyzing the recent literature. A scientometric analysis was applied to the selected studies to show the knowledge among BIM, LCA and CE relationships. With a comprehensive analysis of major challenges and opportunities of LCA and BIM for construction sustainability, key drivers for sustainable building design were identified and analyzed. A prospective integrated framework for CE adoption into BIM-based LCA of buildings and an evaluation method are proposed by analyzing the contemporary issues. It is believed that the analyzed critical issues, identified future research direction and proposed frameworks and this methodology should contribute to effective implementation of CE into the building for promoting sustainable construction.

The construction of bridge is a complex process and involves diverse energy emission-intensive materials. The evaluation of environmental impacts on the basis of life cycle assessment (LCA) is a recognised technique to find the scope of impact mitigation and save resources. However, the studies on the LCA of bridges are rare and lack assessment on the impact of public transportation during bridge construction. The purpose of this study was to develop an integrated exergy-based LCA model for assessing the environmental sustainability of bridges by investigating their environmental impacts and exergy footprint. The proposed exergy-based LCA model consists of three principal assessment models, namely, the environmental impact of energy consumption, pollutant discharge, and resource consumption. The proposed model was then exemplified with a highway bridge as a case study. The results found that the environmental impact in the raw material production and processing stage was the largest, followed by the construction stage and the operation and maintenance stage at second and third place, respectively. The findings of this study can contribute to mitigating the environmental impacts of bridge construction, and the assessment approach can be adopted to guide the environmental impact evaluation for other types of civil constructions globally.

Current LCA-based environmental impact assessments rarely consider the environmental impact of traffic network deterioration due to temporary road closures during road infrastructure construction processes. This study proposes a quantification method to evaluate the environmental impact of traffic diversions during the road infrastructure construction process. The environmental impact assessment method ReCiPe 2016 was selected to evaluate the environmental impact of pollutant emissions from deteriorated traffic conditions. Ten types of traffic emissions were estimated by emission factors and traffic conditions. A case study quantified the potential environmental impact of traffic emissions resulting from four diversion plans based on an actual bridge-construction case study in Chongqing city of China. Results revealed that different diversion plans could lead to different final environmental impacts. “Global warming” dominated both “Human health” and “Ecosystems” impacts. In the “Human health” category, more than 95% of the environmental impact was contributed by global warming. Similarly, the impact of “Global warming” was higher than 75% in the “Ecosystems” category. CO₂ emissions were the main contributor to the overall “Global warming” impact in all four diversion plans. The traffic speed under traffic diversions before and during road infrastructure construction processes is the major factor influencing the overall environmental impact (endpoint).