Evaluating Sustainability Rating System for California Infrastructure Construction Projects

  • McCarthy, Patricia (Department of Civil Engineering and Construction Engineering Management, California State University Long Beach) ;
  • Kim, Joseph J. (Department of Civil Engineering and Construction Engineering Management, California State University Long Beach)
  • Published : 2022.06.20

Abstract

The use of the sustainability rating systems in infrastructure construction projects is not as common in comparison to building construction projects. While the sustainability rating systems share some commonalities, they differ from one another in certain ways. Thus, project teams cannot make reliable decisions when choosing the best sustainability rating tools for a given infrastructure projects. The Department of Transportation (DOT) in several states are developing its own rating system to address the infrastructure sustainability, but not in the case of California. Therefore, this paper presents the statistical results on the important sustainability determinants that affects the success of meeting sustainability goals of infrastructure construction projects. The authors conducted an online survey using the structured questionnaires. The categories considered include site, water/wastewater, energy, materials/resources, environmental, and others. The statistical analyses such as Kruskal-Wallis and ANOVA are conducted using a total of 25 valid and complete data out of 59 surveys collected. The results demonstrate several factors under each of six major sustainable categories have received higher ranks than other factors. The results also show that a statistically significant difference can be found from water, energy, and environmental categories against the other category based on the pairwise comparisons.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

The writers of this paper thank the anonymous participants who completed the survey voluntarily. This material is based upon work supported by CSUTC TRANSPORT-2020/21 under the SB1 grant. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of CSUTC TRANSPORT-2020/21.