THESIS FOR THE DEGREE OF LICENTIATE OF TECHNOLOGY Contractor Monitoring of Productivity and Sustainability

The aging building stock in Europe and regulatory requirements to decrease energy consumption make sustainable refurbishment a valuable alternative to other construction activities. The construction industry appears to suffer from low productivity growth, and the construction productivity debate concludes that productivity measurement is difficult, not least due to changes in input and output qualities. Building certification schemes are one way to measure sustainability. However, existing schemes focus mainly on environmental sustainability and new construction, while refurbishment differs from new construction. The purpose of this research is to analyse the relation between the theoretical concepts of sustainability and productivity in the context of measurement, and to investigate the performance measures used in housing and office refurbishment projects. This thesis is based mainly on literature reviews in the areas of sustainability, productivity, performance measurement and building refurbishment. The empirical data were collected through eight semi-structured interviews- five with site managers employed by large contractors, and three with general or site managers from small and medium sized enterprise