Knowledge management of sustainable construction processes

As the building construction industry accounts for a large part of the ecological burden, sustainable construction processes are very important for achieving sustainable communities. Construction is often a linear process, where different actors act at different stages of the process. In this process there are critical borderlines where the information is to be transferred from one actor to another. Over the years, the construction industry has developed a well-functioning and standardized arrangement for how this happens. However, this has proven to be problematic when sustainability is to be introduced in construction projects. Sustainability goals can often be perceived as diffuse and difficult to interpret. Different actors with different values and knowledge level regarding sustainability also interpret the goals differently. A common way is to set environmental goals as checklists with criteria to be met. In this process, it is common for certain aspects to be sub-optimized while other important aspects fall outside the scope. It is therefore very important to simplify the sustainability parameters without sacrificing complexity. The goals must be clearly formulated initially and followed up continuously throughout the process. The purpose of this paper is to study and analyze good examples of sustainable construction processes with regard to clear goal formulation and continuous follow-up. The result end up in a proposal for a model for knowledge management of sustainable construction processes.