Development of sustainable assessment criteria for building materials selection

Purpose – Selection of sustainable building materials represents an important strategy in the design and construction of a building. A principal challenge therefore is the identification of assessment criteria based on the concepts and principles of sustainability, and the process of prioritizing and aggregating relevant criteria into an assessment framework. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to fill these gaps by describing the development stages of key assessment criteria used within an assessment tool under development for sustainable building material selection in the UK building industry.Design/methodology/approach – After conducting a thorough and systematic literature review, a total of 24 sustainable assessment criteria (SAC) based on the triple bottom line and the need of building stakeholders were identified. A survey of UK architects and designers was conducted to capture their perceptions on the importance of the criteria. A total of 490 questionnaires were mailed out to participants for...

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