Emissions, production and cost in construction operations

Abstract

The detrimental effects of carbon emissions on the environment have attracted significant interest from society in solving this matter. Recent attention has turned its focus on the potential emissions reduction in construction operations. In this light, this thesis aims to examine the emissions, production and cost for the purpose of developing the guidelines in reducing emissions.

First, this thesis establishes the quantitative model to measure the attitude of the industry towards emissions through the medium of utility functions. The findings highlighted that construction personnel are risk averse to emissions, but to differing degrees.

Next, this thesis aims to examine the operational strategies in minimizing emissions per production (unit emissions) and cost per production (unit cost) of construction operations. The performance of earthmoving operations, in terms of emissions, production and cost, is dependent on many variables and has been the study of a number of publications. Such publications look at typical operation design and management. To fill this gap in knowledge, this thesis examines alternative loading policies and their influence on unit emissions, production, unit costs and optimum truck fleet sizes. The underlying models developed using Monte Carlo simulation were used for the analysis in conjunction with field data. The findings demonstrate different penalties/bonuses associated with non-standard earthmoving loading policies on production, unit emissions and unit costs. It is also demonstrated that optimum unit emissions and optimum unit cost are coincident with respect to the fleet size for single-sided and double-sided loading policies.

The thesis also investigates the optima coincidence with respect to minimum unit emissions and minimum unit costs in concreting operations. The results demonstrate that the optimum truck fleet size for unit emissions is the same with the unit costs despite the different methods and operation parameters.

Overall, it can be concluded that by minimizing unit cost, as in traditional practice, the least impact on the environment is obtained while not minimizing unit cost will lead to unnecessary emissions.

The importance of this research lies in providing useful insights in assessing the most environmentally aware and economical way to design and manage construction operations in accordance with the sustainability practices.