Sources of Challenges for Sustainability in the Building Design—The Relationship between Designers and Clients

Abstract

Sustainability demands have changed the building design nature increasing the diversity of requirements, activities, agents, and tools. The aim of this paper is to investigate the sources of challenges in the relationship between architectural and engineering (AE) design firms and clients for promoting sustainability in the building design. Additionally, this study investigated the building information modeling (BIM) deployment by the firms that supports sustainability. The research method adopted is qualitative and participatory, based on focus groups. Two groups were interviewed, eight AE design firms and six developers and/or construction companies, gathering the points of view of service providers and their clients. The identified sources of challenges around sustainability include lack of communication and imprecision of definition, requirements, and scope. Additionally, management issues include performance evaluation, traditional work relationships, tools, and processes that do not support collaboration needs. In addition, AE design firms’ organization affects the client relationship and design quality, including the consideration of sustainability issues in the design solutions. The sources are found in the AE design firm’s processes of strategy planning, business and marketing, design, people, and knowledge management.

A BIM-Based Tool for Assessing Sustainability in Buildings Using the Green Pyramid Rating System

“…introduce new ideologies to develop technologies aiming to compensate for the adverse impact of fast-growing developments to achieve sustainable solutions through collaboration and beneficial decision making. Hence, throughout history, information has been developed to involve new sustainable methodologies to assess previous work results, assign new practices and techniques to raise the influence of sustainability momentum, and increase awareness of the best environmental practices through different advent technologies [1]. Green construction requires and suppresses information and data to support, identify, and review the negative impacts a project can be exposed to, such as waste, energy consumption, or pollution, through continuous development efforts to support the sustainability approaches and environmental aspects.…”