Cumulative Sustainability Performance Index of Contractors and Consultants: Towards a prequalification system

Abstract

The construction industry has a huge detrimental effect on the environment. Presently, the industrialized countries have high consumption of natural resources and are not sustainable. To cater to this challenge, sustainable construction is an emerging trend giving rise to new dimensions of project execution and delivery. Traditionally, contractors and consultants are prequalified against the criteria of legal, financial and technical expertise. Sustainable construction projects are inherently different from traditional construction projects. Present practices of evaluation of green building rating systems approach sustainability on project to project basis. A lot of research has been done on sustainable development and construction but the framework to achieve sustainability has been neglected mostly. None of the green building rating frameworks takes into account sustainability assurance at the stage of procurement of services. The main purpose of this study is to develop a framework assuring the client of a sustainable construction project by introduction of sustainability criteria for prequalification of contractors and consultants. A detailed survey is conducted to identify the weightings of critical factors extracted from literature. The weightings for each prequalification criterion; financial, legal, technical and sustainability are also identified from the survey. A cumulative sustainability performance index (CSPI) is developed for introduction of sustainability criteria evaluation in prequalification framework for contactor and consultant. Thus, providing better insight of the project to the client. To demonstrate proposed CSPI, data from three real life projects is collected and analyzed.