Indicación de las declaraciones y garantías relevantes dadas al Fondo en relación con los activos

As previous sections demonstrate, sustainability has become a significant issue for the construction and highway sector, but it does not seem to be widely practised (Xia and Zhang, 2015). The results of a survey of 200 civil engineers by Yang et al. (2014) showed that nearly all who responded agreed that sustainability is an important issue in construction, but relatively few actually applied or implemented it. Recent studies reveal that more sustainable practices in the construction stage are based on reducing energy and material consumption but not on the other stages of project lifecycle. The issues of construction technologies and innovation for logistics and communication, sustainability strategies for project implementation, still need to be strengthened (Alwan et al., 2017). Building the principles of sustainable construction can help to achieve the objectives and compliance with sustainable development requirements, to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the construction process for a balanced development approach.

Sustainable construction is a part of overall sustainable development, the principles of sustainable development need to be emphasized initially when the principles of sustainable construction are set (Gudmundsson and Höjer, 1996), therefore, most of the principles revert to the concepts of ‘sustainable development’, that is, the three main elements- economic, environmental and social sustainability.

On the bases of sustainable development principles, the International Council for Building defined seven Principles of Sustainable Construction (Table 3.2) which covered the entire lifecycle of construction, from the design and planning phase to disposal phase (Table 3.2) (Kibert, 2008). These principles highlighted the resources needed in each phase of the project, and from this it can be concluded that environmental management, energy efficiency, and whole lifecycle theories are major references to analyse and achieve sustainability in construction.

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Table 3.2 Principles of sustainable construction from Kibert (2008) 1. Reduce: Reduce resource consumption

2. Reuse: Reuse resources

3. Recycle: Use recyclable resources 4. Nature: Protect nature

5. Toxics: Eliminate toxics

6. Economics: Apply lifecycle costing 7. Quality: Focus on quality

These principles from the project management perspective define the operational actions to achieve sustainability in construction by reducing material and resource utilisation, cost saving and improving quality. The central idea of ‘sustainability’ is appropriate, but the term ‘development’ must consider the needs of people, the issues of social development have been given scant attention with the main focus on the environmental and technical problems (Hill and Bowen, 1997).

Using the Republic of South Africa as an example, Hill and Bowen (1997) took the perspective of developing countries to offer a framework for sustainable construction with four pillars – social, economic, biophysical and technical, as shown in Table 3.3. Social pillar is based on the notion of social justice, the economic pillar is through using resources to achieve beneficial balance over the longer term, the biophysical pillar describes operating within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems, and the technical pillar relates to the performance, quality and service life of construction (Hill and Bowen, 1997).

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Table 3.3 Principles of sustainable construction from Hill and Bowen (1997) Economic Sustainability Biophysical Sustainability

Ensure financial affordability to gain benefits, increase job opportunities, and enhance competitiveness in the market place by adopting sustainability practices.

Reducing the use of non-renewable and generic resources – energy, water, materials and land. Minimize pollution in the

environment and damage to sensitive landscape – scenic, cultural, historical and architectural.

Social Sustainability Technical Sustainability Improve the quality of human life, protect

local cultural diversity, promote a healthy and safe working environment and enhance skills and capacity of working people and seek equitable distribution of the social benefits of construction

Good quality of built environment, and use serviceability to promote sustainable construction

The principles from Hill and Bowen provide certain rules to follow, but they may vary from country to country, particularly between developed and developing countries (Mihyeon Jeon et al., 2006). Hill and Bowen’s paper focussed on the Republic of South Africa taking the perspective of developing countries, but the principles were based on the experiences of developed countries (Ofori, 1998).

Ofori (1998) put forward different thoughts for the various circumstances found in the developing world, where several aspects of sustainability are considered as ‘managerial sustainability’ ensuring the construction process, and others as ‘community sustainability’

ensuring the local environment and livelihoods are maintained. These principles suffer from over-generalisation and a lack of guidance for practical application (Zabihi and Habib, 2012). Zabihi and Habib (2012) gave sustainable construction objectives and criteria for four groups of environmental, social, economic and technical issues as shown in Figure 3.6.

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Figure 3.5 Sustainable construction criteria from Zabihi and Habib (2012)

The criteria identified in Table 3.6 are consistent with the principles and are useful in fulfilling the sustainability goals. Zabihi and Habib (2012) stressed that sustainable construction relies on the idea of increasing the construction quality and embracing the environment, and more flexibility, good planning and optimisation.

Thus far, several principles have been adopted for sustainable construction, but some of them are broad in scope, and they are made as general statements but do not go into details how to achieve sustainability (Gao, 2010) . The application of the principles depends on the extent to which decision-makers understand the specific sustainable principles that impact upon construction projects. Therefore, the sustainable principles of the construction project should enhance the awareness of stakeholders of sustainability (Zuofa and Ochieng, 2016).

Chang et al. (2016) identified government regulatory pressure and managerial concerns as the key factors for adoption of sustainable construction practices in many countries. From the project management perspective, the construction project covers the whole lifecycle, and putting in place effective project governance is crucial (HM Treasury of UK, 2007).

Project governance can make sustainable principles operable and practical (Yan, 2012) , it has been referred to ‘the use of systems, structures of authority, and processes to allocate resources and coordinates or control activity in a project’ (Pinto, 2014, p.383, cited in Gemunden, 2016). This has become a trend in construction projects, and regarded as a condition for construction sustainability in recent years (Yan, 2012).

Kibert (2008) argued that the principles for sustainable construction must cover the issues and be flexible enough to adapt to evolving technologies. They must also allow the easy

Environmental

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evaluation of alternatives, and achieve the outcomes of environmental awareness and sensitivity. For the purposes of setting a common expression from various principles, in the context of the size and complexity of highway construction, and according to the triple-bottom line of sustainable development, the six principles discussed in Chapter 2 can be applied to highway construction as follows:

Must respect environmental limits

Environmental sustainability in highway infrastructure projects is referred to as the green highway which integrates ecological consideration to design and construct a roadway.

(Liang et al., 2012). The purpose of this principle is to identify, measure and minimise use of chemicals, resources, materials and emissions affecting factors in all phases of the highway infrastructure construction (Ainger and Fenner, 2013).

Must meet social development needs

‘Social sustainability’ means that throughout project lifecycle, the project should not disrupt neighbourhoods as a consequence of relocating residents, increasing peoples’ travel distances and expenditure and causing safety problems, creating visual intrusion and noise (Liu and Zhou, 2014). To reduce deterioration of the living environment it is important to avoid inadequate or unaffordable transport which leads to excessive building and population densities (UN, 2011b).

Must contribute to economic development

Creating economic benefit is the central task of highway infrastructure construction (Zhang, 2015). The economic sustainability of highways involves two approaches, one is creating direct economic benefit from the new-construction or re-construction of a highway, through using new technology or innovation to continuously improve the construction performance, capacity, and quality. The indirect economic benefit is the social and economic service capability which includes bringing local economic growth, driving the development of employment, catering services, commercial transportation, and increasing the income of residents. After completion, the improved traffic network will lead to local development by promoting regional communication and attracting capital investment (Yuan, 2007).

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Must containing both short-term and long-term goals

Construction is a cradle-to-grave process, and the design needs to be concerned with the environmental consequences over the entire lifecycle from obtaining construction materials to its completion and eventual demolition. The short-term objective is to ensure timely completion of the construction project with optimal use of resources which not only influences profitability of the project, but also meet the quality requirements (Wang et al., 2015). From the point of view of project management, the highway infrastructure project is a temporary or short-term project, but the benefit of a highway is mostly generated after the project has been completed (Silvius et al., 2012). This would include the impact on overall economic activity, productivity, the number and types of job opportunities; production and way of life of local people are dependent on how the project develops. Furthermore, the impacts will be felt for many generations to come and that is considered the long-term goal of the project. Therefore, the highway infrastructure project incorporates both long-term and short-term objectives.

Must promote a good governance

The development of sustainable highway infrastructure project should include the impacts for all stakeholders over time (Busscher et al., 2015). Due to the large number of stakeholders involved, open governance can help to enhance mutual communication and coordination of all departments, ‘it provides the critical links among people, ideas and information that are necessary for success’ (Rose, 2013). The aim of project governance is to set the structure for decision-making and managerial action within a project (Müller, 2012) including the project direction and objectives, project ownership and sponsorship, ensuring the effectiveness of project management, and stakeholders participations (HM Treasury of UK, 2007).

Must rely on technology

‘Technological sustainability’ ensures that through innovative technology, the construction products remain in effective and efficient use throughout their lives. Innovative technologies continue to challenge the construction industry, not only in construction techniques but also the innovative solutions for project management. For example, by using technologies to improve indoor and outdoor environmental quality, waste is reduced, and land resource utilisation increased. New digital technologies and software also have a role to play in construction; Alwan et al. (2017) applied Building Information Modelling (BIM)

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to support sustainable strategic development, and information technologies support the improvement of projects’ performance, logistics, and strategies. In recent studies, green technologies have been regarded as a solution to the negative impacts of construction, and the construction industry has attempted to use them to enhance sustainability (Darko and Chan, 2016).