ABSTRACT
The adverse environmental impacts of construction such as soil and ground contamination, water pollution, construction and demolition waste, noise and vibration, dust, hazardous emissions and odours, demolition of wildlife and natural features, and archaeological destruction have been a matter of concern since the early 1970s and are of more and more academic and professional interest in the construction industry especially after the ISO 14000 series of EM standards was enacted. In this regard, quantitative analytical approaches to EM in construction are currently not as prevalent as qualitative approaches, such as regulations and practical guides, due to the difficulties in transformation of practical data to abstract data that are necessarily used in calculation for EM. However, it is hard to accept an EMS without the background support of quantitative analytical approaches, or an EMS is not consummate if adequate quantitative analytical approaches for sustainment are not there. For the sake of practical approaches and their integrated application for quantitative EM in construction, a research project, An Integrated Analytical Approach to Environmental Management in Construction (Chen 2003), was set up in the Research Centre for Construction Innovation, the former Research Centre of Construction Management and Construction IT, Department of Building and Real Estate, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 1999 and the findings from this research project include one holistic approach and four quantitative EM tools for environmental-conscious construction project management.
