A study of waste materials in conventional construction

Abstract

Rapid growth in construction activities increases construction waste problems around the world. Construction waste gives a negative impact to the environment, costs, time, productivity of projects, and to reduce these negative impacts, it needs a comprehensive understanding of the construction waste generation and management. This research identifies ranking of causes that lead to generate waste materials in construction in two countries namely Sudan and Malaysia, causes of construction waste were identified from past researches. This research was carried out through structured questionnaire focusing on major parties involved in construction project. From the results it was indicated that inadequate planning and scheduling has high rank of occurrence, in contrast effect of weather is the lowest cause in both countries. Identifying the important and most frequently causes can play a major role to eliminate and reduce waste by considering more attention to them, and construction industry players can avoid and alert about how the waste was generated. In addition this research identifies ranking of implemented process used in construction industry to minimize waste materials, the ranking was also conducted in the two countries, Sudan and Malaysia. From the results it was indicated that IBS is the most preferable implemented process to reduce waste in Malaysia while it has the lowest process in Sudan. Through identifying the causes and reduction processes of the construction waste it gives better understanding to the construction community for future construction projects which will give a great benefit for any country in terms of economic, social and protection of the environment.