The Assessment of Pollutant Emissions from Transportation of Construction Materials and the Impact of Construction Logistics Centers

Abstract

Construction logistics centers (CLCs) are gaining increasing interest among academics and practitioners as an alternative method for managing material deliveries in congested urban centers with increasing environmental challenges. Because of their novelty and limited implementation, there is a lack of studies that address CLCs’ environmental impact, particularly concerning materials transportation in the construction phase. Thus, this paper aims to evaluate the contribution of CLCs to emissions from materials transportation. It compares emissions from material transportation in a residential project that consists of 111 condos in the greater region of Paris following a standard design widely used and replicated by the industrial partner when CLCs are used and when they are not. In this comparison, we use actual data collected from a finished project where a CLC was used and historical data from previous projects with identical architectural and engineering designs. In both scenarios, the assessment process included collecting material quantities, trades information, suppliers, and vehicle characteristics to generate the number of deliveries and compute the traveled distances. That information is then used to assess the environmental impact using COPERT, a software that assesses vehicles’ emissions in Europe. The study shows that using CLCs, while all other factors remain the same, can reduce 9%, 12%, 10%, 18%, 19%, and 9% of carbon dioxide (CO2), Particulate matter 2.5 (PM 2.5), Particulate matter (PM 10), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions, respectively. However, (1) the dependence on assumptions and historical data to assess the conventional construction emissions, (2) the limited number of traders who transported their materials through the CLC, and (3) the reliance on only one completed project to evaluate the CLC’s environmental performance make the results inconclusive and suggest further investigation. This work advances knowledge concerning construction transportation’s environmental performance and provides management researchers and practitioners with an approach to examine the environmental potentials of deliveries’ consolidation.