Building Sustainable Score (BSS)—A Hybrid Process Approach for Sustainable Building Assessment in China

doi:10.4236/jpee.2013.15009

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Journal of Power and Energy Engineering, 2013, 1, 58-62

http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jpee.2013.15009 Published Online October 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/jpee)

Building Sustainable Score (BSS)—A Hybrid Process

Approach for Sustainable Building Assessment in China

Jiani Liu1, Grace K. C. Ding2, Bijan Samali1

1Faculty of Engineering & IT, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia; 2Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building,

University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia.

Email: Jiani.Liu[email protected]

Received August 2013

ABSTRACT

Sustainable building in China has gained attention both domestically and abroad. Despite the fast i ncrease in sustainable

assessment tools developed locally or adopted from overseas, there are still criticisms about the current situation of

weak implementation and lack of comprehensive consideration. The lack of consideration of economic and social as-

pects or building performance on whole building life cycle all lead to departure from the true meaning of sustainable

development. And lack of participation on the part of stakeholders makes it too theoretical to be carried out. This re-

search aims to develop a model to address this problem. This research started with review of current sustainable as-

sessment tools applied in China. As the assessment indicators have clear regional disparities, and almost no current tool

considers all three pillars of environmental, economic and social in building life cycle. A n industry survey was therefore

designed for generation of indicators at different building stages, and personal interviews relevant to different occupa-

tion in building industry were conducted to complement the questionnaire survey. After that, the model Building Sus-

tainable Score (BSS) was developed based on the stakeholders’ participation. Finally, the model is verified by a case

study.

Keywords: Building Sustainability; Hybrid Process Approach; LCA; AHP

1. Introduction

Buildings are one of the largest energy consumers in any

industrialized country [1]. According to the report from

Netherland Consulate in China [2], half of the new build-

ings worldwide will be built in China by 2015. By then

approximately 40% of China’s total energy consumption,

50% of concrete and 30% of steel, globally, will be con-

sumed by the construction market in China. Therefore,

sustainable buildings and the sustainable assessment tools

have attracted much attention from the government both

locally and nationally. In the past decades, several inter-

national sustainable assessment tools have been adopted

and used in the Chinese construction market such as

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)

from the US, Comprehensive Assessment System for

Building Environment Efficiency (CASSBE) from Japan

and BRE Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM)

from the UK.

International green building assessment tools were use-

ful to provide information on evaluating environmental

performance of buildings in China. However, these tools

have been developed as country specific and even though

they have been modified to suit buildings in China, they

may not have been used effectively and sufficiently. Gradu-

ally, tools were developed in China to fill the gap. In

2003, the Tsinghua University developed and issued a

‘Green Olympic Building Assessment System (GOBAS)

for the construction of buildings for Olympic games. The

tool was adopted by Beijing Municipal Construction Com-

mission as one of the Beijing’s local green building

standards [3]. Following GOBAS, a national three star

green building evaluation standard was launched in Chi-

na in 2006 called the ‘Evaluation Standards for Green

Buildings (ESGB).

With the development of local building assessment

tools, there are still some criticisms of these tools as most

of them consider environmental factors only, and only a

few take economic and social factors into consideration

[4]. Further criticisms about the effectiveness of building

assessment methods state that they typically assess a build-

ing as a completed product and seldom consider impacts

at different stages of a building cycle [5]. Environmental,

economic and social criteria will have different impacts

at various stages of a development and hence assessing

building performance at different stages becomes impor-

tant and necessary. Despite the fact that some research

has focused on one or several of the building phases,

Building Sustainable Score (BSS)—A Hybrid Process Approach for Sustainable Building Assessment in China

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.

Building Sustainable Score (BSS)—A Hybrid Process Approach for Sustainable Building Assessment in China

Table 1. Indicators for assessing the buildings’ sustainable impacts.

Indicators RII Average RII Rank

Devel Design Contra Govern Acad

Environmental

Energy consumption 0.62 0.75 0.65 0.49 0.65 0.632 2

Resource consumption 0.69 0.67 0.66 0.53 0.62 0.634 1

Emission 0.38 0.41 0.36 0.39 0.37 0.38 4

Land contamination 0.17 0.23 0.24 0.23 0.19 0.21 6

Waste generation 0.43 0.42 0.47 0.57 0.46 0.47 3

Noise 0.29 0.25 0.25 0.37 0.28 0.29 5

Dust 0.08 0.04 0.09 0.13 0.07 0.08 9

Transport i s s ue 0.15 0.10 0.08 0.12 0.15 0.12 7

Landfill 0.21 0.14 0.22 0.18 0.20 0.19 8

Social

Quality of the livability 0.69 0.68 0.72 0.61 0.64 0.67 2

Health and social wellbeing 0.76 0.75 0.78 0.74 0.71 0.75 1

Community satisfaction 0.44 0.52 0.46 0.54 0.48 0.49 3

Esthetics 0.25 0.23 0.25 0.22 0.27 0.24 5

Cultural identity 0.33 0.27 0.25 0.28 0.29 0.27 4

Protection of ancient architecture 0.17 0.16 0.2 0.21 0.18 0.18 6

Convenience surrounding 0.27 0.27 0.25 0.26 0.29 0.27 4

Facilities 0.09 0.09 0.09 0.10 0.09 0.09 7

Economic

Investment expenditure 0.67 0.71 0.63 0.66 0.69 0.67 2

Building related life cycle cost 0.68 0.70 0.78 0.74 0.76 0.73 1

Budget 0.61 0.63 0.66 0.61 0.61 0.62 3

Value stability 0.48 0.47 0.46 0.40 0.44 0.45 4

Performance 0.43 0.41 0.39 0.37 0.42 0.40 5

Compensation 0.10 0.08 0.08 0.17 0.07 0.10 6

Other 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.05 0.01 0.02 7

Figure 1. Conceptual model.

Building Sustainable Score (BSS)—A Hybrid Process Approach for Sustainable Building Assessment in China

Building Sustainable Score (BSS) is a score for the

four stages and it is a step function which assumes dif-

ferent values at different stages of a project life cycle. To

generate the weighting of indicators, analytic hierarchy

process (AHP) is adopted. Weighting is needed to present

the preference of some indicators against others when

combining the indicators in the model. There are many

ways to generate weighting, subjective ones and objec-

tive ones [11]. The reason for choosing AHP in this re-

search is tha t it takes into co nsideration the decis ion mak-

ers’ concerns and experts’ experiences, which are consi-

dered essential for the purpose of evaluating the weight-

ings. Another method which allows the dec ision maker to

provide expert judgment on the relative importance of

the indicators is Delphi. But it is very time consuming as

it needs two or more rounds to generate consensus of

opinions [11].

Based on the above discussion, the BSS model is es-

tablished as follows:

BSSW S

∑

(1)

SI represents the sustainable score at each stage—in-

ception , de sign, cons t ructio n, operatio n and demolition.

WI represents the weight of each stage in sustainable

performance.

{ }

InI,cI, oI

S fEES=

(2)

At each stage, the sustainable score consists of envi-

ronmental score, economic score and social score.

EnI represent the environmental score at one stage

EcI represent the economic score at one stage

SoI represent the social score at one stage

nIi nI

E wE

∑

(3)

represent the environmental score of an indicator

wi represent the weighting for each indicator

AHP method is used to generate weightings of the in-

dicators based on group decision. Suppose there are “k”

experts filling questionnaires to assign weightings to “n”

indicators, the pair-wise comparison matrix is as follows

(based o n the research of Yang [11]):

12k 12k12k

kk k

11 11111212121n1n1n

12k12k1 2k

kk k

21 212122 22222n2n2n

12k12k1

n1 n1n1n2n2n2nn n

aa, ,aaa, ,a,..,aa, ,a

,,, ..,,

. ...

aa, ,aaa, ,a,..,aa

×× ……×××……×…×× ……×

××……××× ……×…×× ……×

…

×× ……××× ……×…×

max

kn nn

λW

, ,a





× ……×



max

λ is the maximum eigen value of a comparison

matrix.

W is the corresponding eigenvector, the components in

W are t he weightings for each of the indicators.

This model assesses environmental, economic and so-

cial performance at each stage in a building life cycle. It

combines quantitative and qualitative analysis. It quanti-

fies the indicators as much as possible which offers a

more systematic evaluation. Besides, the weighting sys-

tem can offer opportunities for interaction with the stake-

holders. So it is more adaptable to local and personal

issues.

5. Conclusions

This paper presented the building sustainable score (BSS)

as an assessment model for a building process approach.

An industry survey and semi-structured personal inter-

views were conducted for data collection, and in order to

generate the assessment indicators at different phases of

a building life cycle for the model development. AHP

method is adopted to generate the weightings for the in-

dicators. A case study will be conducted for model veri-

fication as part of further research.

Key findings in this research include the following:

• Generating assessment indicator s for the three pillars.

As discussed above, the indicators in assessment mod-

el have strong regional disparities and choosing the

adaptable local indicators is the basis of this research.

Based on the industry survey and personal interviews,

a series of indicators are generated for the BSS mod-

el.

• Establishing the building sustainable score model to

aid decision making. The BSS model reveals the sus-

tainability performance at various stages of the de-

velopment so that resources can be dedicated on the

stage that has the most significant impacts on overall

improvements. Besides, different interest groups have

different requirements of building performance and

getting the satisfactory performance will help the stake-

holder to make better decisions.

Building Sustainable Score (BSS)—A Hybrid Process Approach for Sustainable Building Assessment in China

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