Construction contractors play a vital role in reducing the environmental impacts during the construction phase. To mitigate these impacts, contractors need to develop environmentally friendly plans that have optimal equipment, materials and labour configurations. However, construction plans with optimal environment may negatively affect the project cost and duration, resulting in dilemma for contractors on adopting low impacts plans. Moreover, the enumeration method that is usually used needs to assess and compare the performances of a great deal of scenarios, which seems to be time consuming for complicated projects with numerous scenarios. This study therefore developed an integrated method to efficiently provide contractors with plans having optimal environment–cost–time performances. Discrete-event simulation (DES) and particle swarm optimisation algorithms (PSO) are integrated through an iterative loop, which remarkably reduces the efforts on optimal scenarios searching. In the integrated method, the simulation module can model the construction equipment and materials consumption; the assessment module can evaluate multi-objective performances; and the optimisation module fast converges on optimal solutions. A prototype is developed and implemented in a hotel building construction. Results show that the proposed method greatly reduced the times of simulation compared with enumeration method. It provides the contractor with a trade-off solution that can average reduce 26.9% of environmental impact, 19.7% of construction cost, and 10.2% of project duration. The method provides contractors with an efficient and practical decision support tool for environmentally friendly planning.

Construction accounts for a considerable number of environmental impacts, especially in countries with rapid urbanization. A predictive environmental assessment method enables a comparison of alternatives in construction operations to mitigate these environmental impacts. Process-based life cycle assessment (pLCA), which is the most widely applied environmental assessment method, requires lots of detailed process information to evaluate. However, a construction project usually operates in uncertain and dynamic project environments, and capturing such process information represents a critical challenge for pLCA. Discrete event simulation (DES) provides an opportunity to include uncertainty and capture the dynamic environments of construction operations. This study proposes a predictive assessment method that integrates DES and pLCA (DES-pLCA) to evaluate the environmental impact of on-site construction operations and supply chains. The DES feeds pLCA with process information that considers the uncertain and dynamic environments of construction, while pLCA guides the comprehensive procedure of environmental assessment. A DES-pLCA prototype was developed and implemented in a case study of an 18-storey building in Northeast China. The results showed that the biggest impact variations on the global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP), eutrophication (EP), photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP), abiotic depletion potential (ADP), and human toxicity potential (HTP) were 5.1%, 4.1%, 4.1%, 4.7%, 0.3%, and 5.9%, respectively, due to uncertain and dynamic factors. Based on the proposed method, an average impact reduction can be achieved for these six indictors of 2.5%, 21.7%, 8.2%, 4.8%, 32.5%, and 0.9%, respectively. The method also revealed that the material wastage rate of formwork installation was the most crucial managing factor that influences global warming performance. The method can support contractors in the development and management of environmentally friendly construction operations that consider the effects of uncertainty and dynamics.

Building information modeling (BIM) is regarded as a feasible and efficient tool to realize sustainable construction. A lot of research has been conducted using BIM to evaluate and improve environmental, economic, and social performance of construction. Yet there is still lacking in a review which analyzes the application of BIM in sustainable construction (ABSC). This study utilized a systematic literature searching-selection-classifying method to obtain papers of ABSC research from five databases. To investigate who contributes most in ABSC field, the papers were distributed according to the countries/regions, journals, and research centers. To reveal the research emphasis and research trend in ABSC field, the emphasis of research level, project phase, sustainable dimension, and research topic was analyzed. Based on the analysis results, four critical gaps of ABSC research have been identified, including a lack of an integrated BIM tool for all three sustainable dimensions, unexplored potential of BIM in infrastructure, a lack of sustainable BIM application for maintenance and operation management, and a lack of sustainable BIM application at organizational level. This study will be valuable for researchers to gain an in-depth understanding of research trend and knowledge gaps in ABSC research, and future studies could be conducted to fill the gaps found in this review.

Precast concrete (PC) building has ability to promote construction productivity, which attracts the concerns of China government. Most of the previous studies separately analyzed the environment performance or the cost of the PC buildings, failing to combine these two indicators together. This leads to real benefit achieved through the prefabrication unclear for the decision makers in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, which would hurt the adoption of precast concrete in China. This research employs a process-based life-cycle analysis (LCA) method to examine both the energy consumption and cost of the PC components during the whole building life-cycle, including manufacture, transportation, assembly, and recycling. To further describe the process of the method, a case study is conducted. A connection between energy and cost of buildings is found through literature review, based on which the method of evaluating both the environmental and economic performance is proposed. The model proposed in this research builds a calculation and analysis basis for both the environmental and economic performance of the PC components, providing guidance for future studies analyzing multiple indicators of PC construction.