Managing Circular Building Projects

As the most resource intensive and wasteful industry, the construction sector is causing enormous socio-environmental problems. The root causes of these problems can be traced back to the way building projects are managed. Buildings are generally designed as static structures, but quickly demolished when no longer needed. The concept of a circular economy, alternatively, poses that economic development and profitability are possible without continuously growing pressure on the environment through a combination of reduce, reuse and recycle activities. This thesis therefore aims to develop actionable knowledge on managing circular building projects through exploring how information can be used to reduce, reuse and/or recycle building materials. Each of the chapters examines an essential, information intensive management task that contributes to one or more of these material strategies. The first three chapters do this from a demolition management perspective: they cover information usages for material recovery and reuse decisions (Chapter 1), subsequent coordination of demolition activities (Chapter 2) and the support of those activities with BIM-based methods (Chapter 3). The second three chapters do so from a design management perspective: they deal with information usages in generating reversible design proposals with BIM-based methods (Chapter 4), evaluating those proposals with a virtual reality-based method (Chapter 5) and a reflective serious gaming approach (Chapter 6). Two key management strategies were, accordingly, derived to close material loops. Demolition managers need to use information from previous and later design stages; design managers similarly need to use information from previous and later demolition stages. These 'a priori' and 'a posteriori' information uses provide an actionable response to many of the socio-environmental problems that can be attributed to today’s construction industry.