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The task of assessing cement blocks represents an important strategy in the sustainable
design and construction of a building. A principal challenge is the identification of
assessment criteria based on the concepts and principles of sustainability, and the process of
prioritizing and aggregating relevant criteria into an assessment framework .Therefore, the
purpose of this study is to fill these gaps by describing the development stages of key
assessment criteria used within an assessment tool under development for sustainable CB
in the building industry.
After conducting a thorough and systematic literature review, a total of 24 sustainability
assessment criteria based on the triple bottom line and the needs of building stakeholders
were identified. A survey of engineers and architects was conducted to capture their
perceptions on the importance of the criteria. Survey questionnaires were randomly mailed
and handed over to 231 engineers and 110 architects. Ninety eight (98) effective responses
were received, after removing the invalid ones. The response rate was 28.7 per cent. Factor
analysis was utilized to group the criteria into assessment factors for modelling
sustainability of CB.
Ranking analysis revealed that all criteria were highlighted at “high” or “high-medium”
levels in selecting cement block building material. A total of 12 criteria was highlighted at
the “high” importance level, with aesthetics, embodied energy and initial acquisition cost to
make the top three criteria of importance. After the literature review, questionnaire survey
and expertise opinion, the top criterion is the embodied energy. The second high criterion
is the aesthetics and the third top criterion is the initial acquisition cost of CB. Factor
analysis shows that these SACs can be aggregated into six factors, namely; “ environmental
impacts”, “resource efficiency”, “waste minimization”, “life cycle cost”, “social benefit”,
and “performance capability”. Since these criteria were derived from the survey through
expert opinion, consideration of these six criteria in sustainable block making processes and
products will ensure sustainability of building projects.
According to the six criteria in the cement block material selection, the environmental
issues are not strongly considered, despite the need of reducing the environmental impact of
building activities. Hence the result is an example of evidence pointing to the trend that
environmental aspects are no longer the least important factors for cement block material
selection in building projects.
The current study contributes to the building industry and sustainability research in at least
two aspects. First, it widens the understanding of the degree of importance of sustainable
CB making processes and products. It also provides building stakeholders a new way to
select CB, thereby facilitating the sustainability of building projects. |
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