Modeling of the sustainability goal and objective setting process in the predesign phase of green institutional building projects

Abstract

The process of constructing a sustainable green building presents a number of challenges compared with regular buildings. Additional work and documentation is needed in every stage of the project life cycle for the sustainable building to reach its goal of being certified according to one of the available sustainability rating systems. One of the most important steps toward achieving that goal is the eco-charrette process that takes place during the predesign phase of the project. The importance of this step stems from the fact that it sets the sustainability goals and objectives for the entire project. This necessitates the creation of an effective decision support methodology that will support project stakeholders in setting the sustainability goals and objectives of the project before committing valuable time and budget resources to the eco-charrette process. Therefore, this paper presents the development of an agent-based model for simulating the interactions between project stakeholders in the sustainability goal and objective setting process of the project predesign phase. The proposed model was developed based on extensive interviews with industry professionals and project stakeholders, and was tested and validated using a case study of an institutional building project. Simulation results were shown to closely resemble the actual case studies evaluated and highlighted the sensitivity and relationships of building design parameters.