Building Sustainable Score (BSS)—A Hybrid Process Approach for Sustainable Building Assessment in China
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. JPEE
none of them has considered all the stages from life cycle
perspective [6-8]. Impacts duri ng the life cycle of a project
are highly inter-dependent, as one phase can influence
one or more of the other phases. Each phase in a building
life cycle plays an important role in achieving the goal of
sustainability for a project. Besides, an overall rating score
to assess a building’s performance is hard to meet the
requirements of all stake holders, as the definition of
building performance varies according to different inter-
est groups involved in building development [9]. In such
cases, it is ideal to integrate social, environmental and
economic factors at each stage of sustainability assess-
ment in the decision-making process [10].
In order to fill this gap, this research is conducted to
establish a model which assesses the building sustainable
performance of the three pillars at all the stages in build-
ing life cycle. A qu estionnaire survey and pers onal inter-
views were used for data collection. With the survey, an
assessment model based on building process approach
(BPA) was established in this paper to aid decision mak-
ing.
The objectives of this paper are as follows:
- Identifying the sustainable assessment indicators re-
lated to bui lding processes.
- Establishing Building Sus tainable Score (BSS) model
based on building process approach (BPA).
2. Research Method
In order to achieve the goal of sustainability, all the phases
during the building life cycle should be taken into con-
sideration when the sustainability performance of a con-
struction project is examined. In that case, life cycle anal-
ysis (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) are adopted in
this research to assess environmental and economic fac-
tors whilst value score is used for the social factor. The
entire building life cycle performance, building stages and
hence the major activities in each phase, are taken into
consideration. The building life cycle for the research has
been divided into four stages of inception and design,
construction, operation , and demolition.
At each stage, assessment indicators in conjunction with
activities were identified using an industry questionnaire
survey and semi-structured interviews. An online indus-
try survey was conducted in February 2012 followed by
20 interviewees for deeper discussion. With this survey,
an assessment model based on building process approach
(BPA) is established in this paper to aid decision making.
3. Data Collection and Analysis
An industry survey was conducted to identify key indi-
cators for assessment at different stages in a building life
cycle. After condu cting a pilot study with indu stry practi-
tioners, an industry wide questionnaire survey was con-
ducted online between February and May 2012. A total
of 479 responses were collected. A follow-up semi-
structured personal interview with industry practitioners
was also conducted in Guangdong Province for deeper
investigation of the issues between May and June 2012 .
Participants in this questionnaire survey were devel-
opers, design consultants, contractors, government agen-
cies, academics and others. Others included lawyers, prop-
erty managers, secretaries and construction workers. These
six groups are highly relevant to the green building re-
search and their opinion on sustainable assessment tools
will contribute a lot to this research. Among those par-
ticipants, 30.3% have more than 20 years of work expe-
rience, 49.1% had 6 - 20 years and the rest had less than
5 years of work experience. Among these participants,
about 56% of the them thought the current trend in green
buildings in China is just starting and is developing
slowly, 26% of the participants though t it has not started
yet, 16% though t it has started and is de veloping fast and
2% thought it is almost at a mature stage but still behind
the western countries. Compared with current literature
about China’s green building situation, as the views were
not as optimistic as por trayed. Thoug h the green building
has started since the last century, they have not received
enough attention from the public. As for the solution to
this situation, “developing an assessment system” and
“establishing a complete legal system” become their first
choice.
In order to establish an assessment model, the indica-
tors were identified from a literature review. In this sur-
vey, participants were asked to rank the relevant indica-
tors based on their experience and knowledge. The Rela-
tive Importance Index (RII) was adopted to analyze the
results. The indicators chosen were based on their rela-
tive importance. Table 1 shows the rankin g of the indi-
cators fr om the ques t ionnair e s ur ve y.
After that, semi-structured interviews were conducted
to further explore the relevance and importance of indi-
cators at each stage.
4. Model Development
Based on the data analysis from the questionnaire survey
and personal interviews, the indictors for each stage were
developed. The conceptual model has been established as
follows:
Based on the conceptual model (Figure 1), a mathe-
matics model based on building process approach (BPA)
is established to aid decision making. The assessment
model consists of five sub-models, each of which reflects
sustainability performance of a building phase. Each sub-
model will analyze the building performance in accor-
dance with the environmental, economic and social as-
pects of building activities at each stage.
