By Prasoon Shrivastava, Founder & CEO of Prasoon Design Studio and Zepth
When Abu Dhabi launched the ESTIDAMA Pearl Building Rating System in 2010, it was as much a decisive action as it was a precursor of more regulations in the global construction industry. Accordingly, administrations in leading cities globally have tightened the regulatory noose in construction, mandating stakeholders to comply with green building ratings. The overarching objective is to drive sustainability in an industry accounting for about 36% of the global final energy consumption and about 40% of the CO2 emissions.
The sustainability discourse in the construction industry is often centred around materials, and for the right reasons: Cement, the most utilized construction material in the world, is responsible for up to 2.8 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions annually — about 7–8% of the total emissions globally. To put that into perspective, if the cement industry was a country, it would be the third largest emitter in the world. As an architect, I cannot help but despair over the industry’s “carbon legacy” that could echo through the ages. So, what can be done to reduce that disproportionately high footprint?
De-carbonization of construction materials
A general rule of thumb is to replace cement with alternative, low-footprint, renewable, recyclable materials. As per local feasibility and socioeconomic conditions, bamboo, stones, and laminated timbers make a good case in this regard. Such materials allow architects to reconcile the project with local habitats and the environment while reducing embodied carbon. However, in most locations, particularly urban centres, such materials are unviable due to several reasons, including cost, climatic deterrents, a lack of availability, and local by-laws.
Such circumstances — exemplified by most urban centres in the Middle East — require architects to re-envision how cement is used. Typically, by reducing the clinker ratio — the percentage of clinker in cement — the cost of production and the environmental impact can be decreased significantly. Most importantly, provisions to reduce wastage must be made. As it turns out, as much as 30% of the total building materials delivered to a site could be wasted during construction. The use of efficient project management software helps keep the on-site material wastage in check.
The methods and models for sustainable construction
In recent years, modular construction, particularly prefabrication, has gained ground. Prefabs, while largely purpose-built for affordable housing initiatives or makeshift dwellings, carry immense potential for mainstream adoption in the urban development context. With significantly lower carbon footprint and requirements in terms of cost, labour, and time, prefabs epitomize sustainable construction. The same can be said about 3D-printing, which has found an admirer in the UAE, as evidenced by the governmental strategy to 3D-print about 25% of buildings in Dubai by 2030.
In the near term, our focus should be on optimizing the existing, traditional construction methods by leveraging technologies such as AI. Intelligent integration of various construction management processes and AI adoption can help developers create a single source of truth, get real-time alerts, make data-driven decisions, and proactively mitigate risks. Centralized construction operations and monitoring will ensure high quality and efficiency while reducing inventory delays, site accidents, and cost overruns. For example, by reducing waste, developers can save on payments made to waste-management companies. Such savings add up significantly over the entirety of the construction phase.
Zepth, our AI-driven construction management platform, equipped with all those competencies, was built bearing in mind the building’s life-cycle sustainability. The rationale was that when a building is constructed using a common data environment (CDE), the resulting tech infrastructure allows facility managers and operators to seamlessly upgrade, operate, and manage energy-consuming systems across their life cycles. Research indicates that the use of sophisticated construction management platforms could potentially deliver a whopping 410 billion euros a year in savings on global energy spending. Besides energy savings, data-driven construction management also enhances the developer’s ESG reputation — something that far supersedes cost savings in today’s eco-conscious consumerism.
In the Middle East, policy interventions like ESTIDAMA are essential to achieve visible sustainability outcomes in construction due to the industry’s deep-rooted traditional ways. Going forward, the emphasis should be on incentivizing the developer community to embrace sustainable construction by providing easy access to green materials and subsidizing procurement costs for compliant projects. Incentive-based regulatory approaches are our best bet to strike synergies between green-material suppliers and innovators of novel construction methods and models. If undertaken methodically and timely, they can position the region as a trailblazer in sustainable construction.