Application of Life Cycle Assessment for a residential building construction

The built environment uses significant amounts of natural resources and energy in the world economy. After achieving the energy efficiency of the building use/operational phase, the next focus of improvement is the production phase of a building life cycle. Life cycle assessment (LCA) provides a scientific framework to evaluate environmental impacts considering the entire life cycle. This paper presents a typical residential building construction case study in India and demonstrates the application of LCA for calculating environmental impacts resulting from the production and the construction phases. The life cycle assessment software tool 'SimaPro 7.3' is used. It is found that the building walls (external and internal masonry work) is the most significant building component. The other significant building components are 'foundation', 'roof slab/beam' and 'plinth beam'. Among the building materials used, 'brick', 'steel' and 'concrete' are found to be important in terms of impacts. Evaluation of alternate materials for the building walls indicates that there is significant potential to reduce the environmental impacts.