Decision Making Framework for Selecting Sustainable Construction Products

Abstract

In construction industry, decision making plays an important role in achieving sustainability. Although decision making process and methods have significantly expanded to consider most product information when selecting a sustainable alternative to increase accuracy. The decision making process and methods itself has turned out to be a barrier due to knowledge intensiveness of the process and unreliable product information. This research focuses on developing a simple and transparent decision making framework for selecting sustainable product as alternatives. Sustainable products are studied and previous researches on sustainable products are reviewed to identify the scope of the framework, criteria that needs to be considered and factors that would address the criteria in accordance with the research objectives. The framework is developed comprising a decision making model that provides a visual comparison of the alternatives in consideration. Applicability study and case study of the framework provided insights on the issues with the framework and its limitations, along with being a validation step of the framework. The resulted framework provides a distinct anticipated outcome description for each product considered, thus enabling the decision makers to identify the most suitable alternative. The applicability of the framework is expected to influence the spread of sustainable products globally in all scales of construction projects.