Awareness and usage of life cycle assessment methodology in the building sector

Abstract: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was developed to determine the holistic environmental impact of a product or service or activity or process to inform useful alternatives with fewer environmental impacts. The built environment is one of the largest sectors in any community, and buildings are one of the primary products of the built environment. Since buildings comprise of six life cycle stages; these phases significantly contribute to the environmental impacts of building construction and when in use. The objective of this paper is to determine the level of awareness and usage of LCA in the building sector and how LCA methodology can assist to achieve sustainable building practices in the built environment. The study was conducted with reference to existing theoretical literature, published and unpublished research. The study is mainly a literature review on LCA, its features, applications benefits and barriers regarding the building sector. Literature studied, revealed that LCA is not significantly utilized in the construction industry, particularly in the construction stage because most contracting companies are not aware of it, and where they are aware, there is resist to adopt the methodology. Also, the significant barriers to building experts who are aware of the method are that the method is termed complicated, time-consuming and costly. However, LCA when adopted in the construction environment, will assist to achieve sustainable building practices because its systems perspective avoids problem shifting from one life cycle stage to another. Also, since LCA procedure investigates a broad range of environmental impacts associated with industrial products such as Climate Change, Acidification, Ozone Depletion and Human toxicity. LCA, therefore, informs producer decisions about alternative processes in their attempt to improve industrial environmental performance