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The emphasis on the life cycle impacts of projects is also a process efficiency drive to ensure that construction strategies take a long-term view of costs, explaining why sustainable buildings typically have lower running and maintenance costs. These are achieved through sustainable design strategies and innovative use of sustainable materials and equipment. Even where upfront costs of sustainable projects are high, it takes a relatively short time to recover such additional costs in addition to the indirect benefits to clients, end users, and society. In particular, projects designed or refurbished to the attributes of economic sustainability can significantly extend or prolong both the physical and economic lives of a built asset. The economic life of a building is exhausted the moment the cost of maintenance exceeds the revenue flow from the asset. The benefits of designing sustainable attributes also extend to low maintenance and running costs, enhancing returns on investments, affordability, and clients’ or end-user retention.
Various design and construction management strategies exist that can be used to drive economic sustainability in projects’ delivery, but for effective outcomes, sustainability has to be designed into the project right at the very beginning. Conscious of post-construction running costs in terms of energy costs, efforts are deployed to see the potential for alternative energy sources such as solar energy, requiring site optimization and re-orientation in the direction where solar energy can easily be captured. Using stark effects and a passive ventilation system will avoid mechanical processes and hence, eliminate the use of energy. Also, increasing ceiling heights and using plants can be used to enhance cooling, as heat is known to rise, and also to allow daylight. Similarly, plants and innovative designs are also used to cool the building to reduce the amount of energy in use to keep running costs to a bare minimum. Secondly, executing sustainability site analysis will allow what materials can be reused and recycled, resulting in large savings on building costs. This is particularly the case in the refurbishments of built assets. The economic sustainability pillar and the environmental pillar can be seen to be inextricably linked and complementary, as economic sustainability measures also enhance environmental sustainability and vice versa; thus, synergies can be found between actions under the two pillars. Other strategies which include the use of Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA), and Building Information Modelling (BIM) are used to achieve economic sustainability, these will further be elaborated upon when we come to discuss the tools for achieving economic sustainability.
Another dimension of economic sustainability is the opportunities projects provide for local employment and income generation, boosting local employment in the process. However, for this to be done, a sustainable site analysis is necessary to indicate materials that could be sourced locally for the project, as well as a local skills audit to indicate the possible skills available that could be employed. For maximum local impact, projects should be designed to use local materials and skills available without compromising the structural, functional, and aesthetic quality of the project. The Crossrail project in London is a case in point where it was deliberately decided to enhance the local economy, and the following were the economic contributions to the local economy:
At least £42 billion is estimated to be generated
What has been demonstrated is that the building construction sector is well positioned to drive economic sustainability given the capacity to drive down costs through design and management efficiency and innovations, and above all, leverage employment and income-earning opportunities for the local economy. However, to effectively do this, sustainability policies and practices must be mainstreamed into projects at the conceptualization stage of the project and not appended at a later stage of the project life cycle.
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