The construction industry is one of the most environmentally sensitive sectors, significantly impacting the adoption of sustainable development practices. Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) pillars are essential for assessing corporate sustainability performance, revealing risks, and guiding improvement. Despite the widespread use of indicators, a notable gap exists in ESG frameworks oriented to assess company performance within the sector, with limited research on achieving standard tools. This study proposes a practical standardized framework of indicators for the European construction industry and provides a set of KPIs for the Italian context, serving as a tool to measure and report ESG performance. The methodology consists of the selection of indicators from established protocols for assessing and reporting ESG criteria, such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB). The selection process resulted in the identification of 118 indicators, categorized into 44 environmental, 54 social, and 20 governance indicators, enabling construction companies to comprehensively measure and report their ESG performance in accordance with disclosure regulations. The result of this work serves policymakers seeking to develop standardized frameworks specific to the construction industry, for defining expert panels to evaluate mandatory disclosures from companies, and as guidance for companies who need guidelines to assess their sustainability performance and ensure compliance and alignment with existing frameworks.

The widespread adoption of circularity principles in the building sector fuels the need for robust and comprehensive evaluation systems, which could benefit from the approaches and indicators employed in widely accepted building sustainability assessment (BSA) methods. Simultaneously, the effective consideration of circular economy (CE) principles into BSA methods becomes increasingly urgent. An important step towards achieving these targets is the investigation of whether, and to which degree, the existing BSA methods encompass and express circularity principles; this study focuses on this relatively underexplored theme. Specifically, this study investigates the degree of association between five widely used BSA methods and the circularity strategies included in the 10R Framework. The methods examined are BREEAM, DGNB, LEED, Level(s) and SBTool (versions and criteria for new buildings). The examination was conducted at the lowest self-contained and score-attributing level of each method and was undertaken by five expert groups—each assigned one method. A quantitative scale from 0 to 5 was used to assess the strength of the association. The results are analysed in terms of (i) the criteria/thematic areas within each method receiving high/low scores, and (ii) the circularity strategies deduced to be strongly/weakly represented in and across the BSA methods. Common trends and milder differences across these axes are observed. Generally, the associations appear stronger in thematic areas relevant to, among others, resources and lifecycle performance, and weaker regarding parameters linked to user comfort. The R-strategies Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rethink emerge as more intensely represented in the examined methods. The study’s results indicate areas for further research and potential methodological enhancement.

The construction sector is a major contributor to environmental degradation, prompting the need for integrating sustainability into its practices. This need has driven the development of sustainability assessment methods across various scales of the built environment. Simultaneously, the recent emphasis on Circular Economy (CE) principles has introduced challenges in translating these principles into measurable outcomes within the construction sector. This study aims to investigate the extent to which circularity principles are embedded within existing sustainability assessment methods for new buildings. The study begins by addressing the interrelationships and distinctions between circularity and sustainability concepts, establishing a foundation for the subsequent analysis. Five internationally recognised sustainability assessment methods for new buildings—BREEAM, DGNB, LEED, Level(s), SBTool—were examined to assess their incorporation of circularity aspects. Each component of these methods was scrutinised for alignment with the 10 circularity strategies outlined in the well-established 10-R framework of waste hierarchy. Expert groups, consisting of CircularB COST Action members, independently evaluated the methods and provided opinions on the direct and indirect associations between the assessed components and the 10-R principles. Disagreements were resolved through group discussions. The analysis revealed varying degrees of integration and explicit reference to circularity principles across the assessed methods. The study also highlighted the subjectivity inherent in identifying correlations and the challenges connected to linking certain circularity-related concepts in the built environment—such as resilience and adaptability—with the 10-R strategies. The findings underscore the need for a more in-depth analysis before making direct comparisons of the integration of circularity principles among different sustainability assessment methods, given their methodological differences. The study also identifies directions for future research.

This paper is based on the preliminary phase of a larger project to develop a version of the ITACA Protocol specifically for university campuses in Italy. This phase is divided into two stages: theoretical and implementation. In the Theoretical part, 44 thematically relevant papers were reviewed in full text, and the indicators used in them were extracted, resulting in 258 unique indicators. The indicators were classified according to the SNTool’s categories. Then, their units and frequency of occurrence, defined as the number of papers in which each indicator appeared, were recorded. In the Implementation part, 20 of the most frequently used indicators- for which there was enough data from the Politecnico di Torino (POLITO) - were selected, and the sustainability score of POLITO was calculated based on them. In the next step, a Q-sort analysis was conducted to prioritize 10 SWOT-based actions, and 3 future scenarios were identified. Finally, for all the scenarios, feasibility studies were conducted to assess the improvement and corresponding sustainability scores. The scenario with the highest score was identified as the best option