INTEGRATION OF SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES WITHIN CONSTRUCTION PROCESSES

There has been growing awareness of the importance of sustainability in the built environment as it can improve the quality of life. Sustainable construction, which is the application of sustainable development practices to construction, can have a big impact on the quest for a sustainable built environment. Efforts investigating ways of achieving sustainable construction targets recognised the importance of capturing and managing the knowledge required to improve sustainability in construction. This was investigated within the C-SanD Project (Creating, Sustaining, And Disseminating Knowledge For Sustainable Construction: Tools, Methods And Architectures), which was conducted in the UK by University of Salford in collaboration with the London School of Economics, Loughborough University and a number of industry partners (1) . The aim of the project was to develop, test, and implement software tools which enable the capture and retrieval of relevant knowledge, and to embed these tools in working methods that enable the creation of new knowledge particularly in the area of sustainable construction. This paper discusses the issues identified during the field work conducted with practitioners from the industry. It highlights that little has been done to create and retain knowledge on sustainable construction and the need for a structured framework to consider sustainability issues within the whole construction process. The paper then presents 'sustainability management activity zone' to support the implementation of sustainable construction practices integrated within a generic design and construction process map (Process Protocol) (2) . It concludes that there is much yet to be done in order to better manage sustainable construction processes during construction projects within the industry.