Climate change, economic benefit, social responsibility, and ongoing infrastructure costs are driving the shift toward sustainable construction. During the design process, engineers are looking at the complete life cycle of a structure, which involves cross-disciplinary collaboration, societal engagement, and considerations for ongoing maintenance and end-of-life planning. To manage this complexity and ensure that critical processes are followed, tools and techniques such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and the Envision rating system are invaluable during the design phase. However, overreliance on tools or using them to accrue points is not to the project’s advantage. Ensuring that the users’ preferences and goals are being met while emphasizing the benefits to the environment, human quality of life, and financial savings will lead to the best outcome.
To this end, researchers Dalya Ismael and Tripp Shealy sought to reframe the credit descriptions within sustainability rating systems, explicitly nudging engineering professionals to recognize the interconnected benefits of their design decisions. In their study, “Reframing Sustainability Rating Systems to Emphasize Interconnected Benefits Increases Sustainable Design Practices among Engineers,” the authors want to help engineers to understand how design solutions not only align with their immediate project objectives but also can meet the needs of future users and clients. Learn more about how this research lays the foundation for better sustainable design practices in the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management at https://doi.org/10.1061/JCEMD4.COENG-14590. The abstract is below.
Abstract
Engineering design and construction teams commonly use decision tools, such as rating systems, to manage the complexity of infrastructure projects. However, these systems often focus predominantly on environmental dimensions, potentially overlooking the holistic economic and social aspects of sustainability. This can hinder decision-makers from recognizing the benefits, thereby inadvertently impeding optimal sustainability performance. This research explores a potential solution: reframing the goals of credits on rating systems to explicitly highlight the interconnectedness of environmental, social, and financial dimensions. The aim was to amplify engineers’ motivation towards higher levels of sustainability performance. The study examined the effect of the goal-framed credits by comparing the sustainability scores between engineering professionals (𝑛=42) who used the original Envision system and the reframed version when evaluating a case project. The control group participants averaged a score of 95.4 Envision points (37%), while the intervention group averaged 121.8 Envision points (48%). The reframed credits significantly increased engineering professionals’ sustainability goal setting. Emphasizing financial and social objectives on credits from the Envision rating system, rather than solely focusing on the existing environmental goals, had a favorable influence on professionals’ sustainable design choices. This reframing, by emphasizing the interconnectedness of environmental, social, and financial dimensions of each decision, appears to amplify the awareness, motivation, and selection of higher levels of sustainability achievement, thereby increasing their perceived value and leading to a shift in sustainability-oriented decision-making. The findings suggest that reframing rating systems to better emphasize the interconnectedness of the environmental, social, and financial dimensions of each decision can serve to help engineering teams set higher goals for sustainable performance.
See how stepping back and rethinking how to apply sustainability rating system tools to your design will make how you use them better in the ASCE Library: https://doi.org/10.1061/JCEMD4.COENG-14590.
