The construction industry has a relevant social and economic function and has become fundamental to achieving the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This industry contributes significantly to global CO2 emissions due to embodied and operating energy. There are methodologies to evaluate them, but they lack integration with other variables. In the case of buildings and assessing safety and costs, environmental assessment needs to be incorporated; current methodologies are complex to implement and, in general, costly in terms of economic and human resources. This research proposes the Environmental Economic Index (EEI) to evaluate structural building projects and support decision-making, obtained from a simplified methodology. In the case study, located in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, the same building structure was designed to subject to different operational loads and lateral forces, with structural concrete and structural steel. For this building, the concrete structure subject to seismic actions had a better result when estimating the EEI and comparing it with the other structural alternatives. The contribution of this work is to develop a simplified methodology to evaluate structural projects in the design phase, which integrates economic, environmental, and safety variables and supports decision-making in designers and real estate developers.

The construction industry has a relevant social and economic role and has become critical to improving global sustainability. This industry contributes significantly to global CO 2 emissions due to embodied energy and operating energy. There are methodologies to assess them, but they lack integration with other variables such as safety and costs in buildings. These methodologies are complex and costly in economic and human resources, accentuated in small-scale building projects. This research proposes the Environmental Economic Index (EEI) to evaluate structural building projects and support decisionmaking, based on a simplified method that exchanges parametric design and project management information without requiring specialized knowledge. Its development was based on modeling different structures for the same building subjected to several operational and lateral loads, with structural concrete and structural steel; the case study was developed in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. The concrete structure with seismic actions had a better result when comparing it with the other structural alternatives; for the same loads, the concrete structures were more economical; when modifying the loads to include seismic actions, the costs had an increase that is not significant when compared with the potential losses. Concrete structures would generate lower emissions and energy consumption quantified up to the construction stage regarding environmental impacts. The contribution of this work is to develop a simplified methodology to evaluate structural projects in the design phase, which integrates economic, environmental, and safety variables and supports decision-making by designers and real estate developers.