Introduction

Adverse environmental impacts of construction such as soil and ground contamination, water pollution, construction and demolition (C&D) waste, noise and vibration, dust, hazardous emissions and odours, demolition of wildlife and natural features and archaeological destruction have been major concerns since early 1970s and received more and more attention in the construction industry, especially after the BS 7750 and the ISO 14001 Environmental Management System (EMS) were promulgated one after another in the 1990s. However, although there have been many academic studies and professional practices for environmental management (EM) in construction, many of them were conducted in the form of regulations or guidelines. A literature review conducted by the authors of this book from the ASCE’s CEDB (Civil Engineering Database) and the EI’s Compendex® databases (refer toTable 3.6) revealed that only 2% of works provide quantitative methods in the total number of publications related to EM in construction in 2003. In this book, a set of quantitative methods, which finally composes an integrative prototype for supporting the EM in construction, is presented to support the EM in the lifecycle of a construction project.