【24C】Characterization of Waste in Building Construction Projects.doc

CHARACTERIZATION OF WASTE IN BUILDING CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS Alfredo Serpell Department of Construction Engineering and Management, Pontificia Universidad Cat—lica de Chile, Casilla 306, Santiago, Chile. Adriano Venturi, Jeanette Contreras School of Civil Construction, Pontificia Universidad Cat—lica de Chile, Casilla 306, Santiago, Chile. ABSTRACT Information obtained from productivity consulting services provided to a substantial number of building construction projects from 1990 to 1994, has been processed and organized with the purpose of studying the types of construction waste in this kind of construction projects. From the results obtained in this study, this paper presents: 1) a classification of construction waste and their main causes, and 2) statistics of the frequency and relative importance of these types of waste. 1 Introduction Since the beginning of a construction job, project/site management has to deal with many factors - most of them caused by their own actions or inaction - that negatively affect the construction process, producing different types of waste that can convert a good to be project into a bad it was project. In most cases, construction managers do not know or recognize the factors that produce waste nor have they measurements of their importance. It can be said that most of the factors are not easily visible. Thus, the identification of these factors and their causes, and the measurement of their importance is a useful information that would allow management to act in advance to reduce their negative effects. During the last 5 years, consulting services have been provided by a consulting group at the Department of Construction Engineering and Management of the Catholic University of Chile, to more than 40 construction sites that have started programs to improve their site performance, most of them successfully. Seventeen of these construction sites were high rise building construction projects and were selected for studying purpos