Sustainable Technologies for Building and Infrastructure

The paper discusses the importance of sustainable technologies in the building and construction industry and presents a framework for the systematic evaluation of their performance. It highlights the need for a multi-disciplinary approach and identifies key objectives for sustainable building design and construction.

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Research Methodology
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Sustainable Technologies for Building and Infrastructure
Introduction
The building and construction industry is an essential component to any country’s economy
although it has an important effect on the environment. In accordance to size, construction is
among the leading consumers of energy, water, as well as material resources and it is an
arduous emitter (Wong, and Zhou, 2015, p. 156). In response to these effects, there is an
increased consensus amongst organisations dedicated to environmental performance targets
which advocates actions and strategies required to make construction practices more
sustainable (Balaban, and de Oliveira, 2017, p. 68). Accordingly, with regard to such
important impact to the building construction sector, the ecological building methodology has
a greater prospective to make a notable involvement to sustainable progress. Indeed,
sustainability is a complex and comprehensive model that has amplified to become a major
argument in the building sector. Currently, the performance of sustainable technologies
within the building industry is traditionally not entirely evaluated holistically, but only from
majorly one sided issue perspective such as environmentally, or only financially. Therefore,
such practices are restricted in a way that they ignore the relation between technologies in the
physical facility as expressed in the life cycle expenses, design objectives of the project and
its shareholders, and effect on the environment may be conflicting (Kibert, 2016).
Accordingly, this paper identifies the key cause-and-effect relation of chosen sustainable
building technologies and presents elements of a framework for the systematic evaluation of
their performance from a social, environmental, technical and economic point of view.
(Research gap). The research question: What engineering approach should be applied to
ensure sustainable buildings?

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According to Chang, Huang, Ries, and Masanet, (2016) a construction project can only be
said to be sustainable if and only if it meets the following aspects of sustainability that is
social, technological, environmental and economic. Several sustainability matters are
intertwined and the interaction of the building with its neighbourhood is also significant.
Subsequently, the environmental matter share a common concern that entails the decline in
the consumption of non-renewable resources, water, wastes, reduction in emissions as well as
pollutants (Shou, Wang, Wang, and Chong, 2015, p. 293). Therefore, these objectives can be
realised through a range of building sustainability assessment approaches: minimisation of
energy use, use of eco-friendly materials and products, conservation and preservation of
water resources and optimised operational and maintenance practices.
Harris, Shealy, and Klotz, (2016) Claim that so as to realise a sustainable future in the
building sector, there is need to adopt multi-disciplinary approach including a range of
aspects like advanced use of materials, energy saving, control of emissions and pollutants,
and minimising waste materials. There are several approach through which the present nature
of building practice can be improved and regulated to make it less destructive to the
surrounding. Thus, to advance a competitive advantage by using eco-friendly building
performance, the entire lifecycle of the building should be under the context that these
practices are undertaken (Pearce, and Ahn, 2017). Research has highlighted a number of
objectives which are supposed to shape the structure for instigating ecological building
design and building while considering the ethics of sustainable concerns such as ecological,
technological, social and economic aspects. As such objectives include cost efficiency,
resource maintenance and design for humanoid adaptation.
Resource conservation is the practice of realising more with less which involves managing of
the usage of resources by humans to give the maximum outcome to the present generation
and at the same time maintaining the aptitude to attain the requirements of the upcoming

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generations Von (Geibler et al, 2017, p. 133). This matter has become a fierce discussion
regarding sustainable development. Guo, Tian, Chertow, and Chen, (2016) asserts that some
means are becoming exceptionally intermittent thus the use of the outstanding stock should
be carefully handled. The building sector is the leading user of natural resources thus there is
need to pursue initiatives to construct environment sustaining buildings to focus on the rising
the efficiency of resource consumption (Grubler et al., 2018, p. 515). Accordingly,
approaches which decline wastage of material during the process of construction and give
prospects for reusing as well as reuse of construction materials contribute to enhancing
efficient resource consumption. Certainly, calls for becoming resource effective has been
spearheaded by the rising concern by the exhaustion of non-renewable resources. Renewable
materials play a vital part in the building industry such as water, energy, material and land.
The preservation of non-renewable means play a great role towards a sustainable future.
Research has shown that the use of energy is an essential environmental subject matter and
managing its usage is unavoidable in any operational civilisation with houses being the
predominant energy users. Building use energy in addition other resources at every phase of
the construction project from inception of design and building through operations to final
flattening. Chen, Lin, and Tseng, (2015) argue that the volume of energy used during the
lifecycle of a construction material from fabrication process to managing of the construction
resources after its end life impact on the flow of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to the air in
various ways. Thus, the consumption can be immensely reduced by enhancing productivity
which is an appropriate way to minimise greenhouse gas emissions. Also in the process it
slow down the depletion of non-renewable energy sources. According to Giesekam, Barrett,
Taylor, and Owen, (2014) building lifecycle analysis shows that operation energy accounts
for approximately 80 percent of the aggregate energy use and carbon dioxide discharges of a
building that come from habitation through, ventilation, cooling, heating and use of hot water

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(p. 202). Certainly, this comprise energy from burning of fuels like coal and oil, gas, and
electricity.
The target of sustainable energy preservation is to decline the use of fossil energy and upturn
the use of renewable energy resources (Weaver et al., 2017). Therefore, some of the
approaches under consideration include choices of materials as well as construction
techniques (Moss, and Marvin, 2016). According to Ernst et al. (2016) making right choices
of materials which have low embodied energy plays a major role in declining the energy used
through manufacturing, processing, and transporting the materials. Similarly, insulating the
building envelope is also a significant energy conservation measure as it has the greatest
expedite effect on energy consumption (Zhang, Provis, Reid, and Wang, 2014, p. 115).
Planning for energy resourceful deconstruction and reusing of materials reduce the use of
energy in the manufacturing which saves on natural resources (Dincer, and Acar, 2015, p.
587). Therefore, buildings designed for deconstruction should involve unravelling of systems
and reductions in chemically incongruent binder cements.

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