A Maturity Model for a Sustainable Construction Industry

A Master of Science thesis in Engineering Systems Management by Taha Mohamad Dahabra entitled, "A Maturity Model for a Sustainable Construction Industry," submitted in January 2014. Thesis advisor is Dr. Adil Al Tamimi. Available are both soft and hard copies of the thesis.

Abstract

Although the construction industry has provided societies with facilities and infrastructure projects that meet their needs and fulfill their requirements, created up to 7% of the world's job opportunities, accounted for around one-tenth of the world's gross domestic product, and stimulated the growth of other industries; it also, on the other hand, proven to have a negative impact on the environment [1]. The construction industry accounts for 40% of CO2 emissions worldwide, 30% of raw material usage, 40% of energy consumption, and 20% of fresh water consumption [2]. The world's countries have achieved varying levels of success in implementing sustainability in their local construction industries. However, it is still difficult to rank them based on their achievements due to the absence of a clearly defined scale that all countries can be compared to. This thesis introduces a new concept called mature sustainability in the construction industry. It also introduces a maturity model that can be used as a scale to evaluate how mature a country is doing in regard to its sustainability adoption in the local construction industry. The model is created by studying different maturity models from other industries and understanding how they define maturity. Furthermore, the thesis develops a rating system that can determine a country's sustainability level using mathematical equations, and it includes a case study in which the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is rated to show how the rating system works. The input data of the rating system was obtained by conducting a survey on different construction companies and the local public of the UAE. The rating example found that the UAE falls into level 2, which is the "satisfactory" level, and deviated from the ideal mature level of 2.427.