MECHANISM FOR INTEGRATING SUSTAINABILITY IN ENGINEERING DESIGN

Infrastructure has traditionally been the foundation of urban development. In recent years, sustainability is required to be incorporated into infrastructure planning, design, construction and maintenance. These additional considerations make design work and process more complicated than traditional engineering design. This paper proposes an integration mechanism to help the owners and designers to integrate sustainability issues into design process, communicate with stakeholders and achieve consensus. Literature concerning engineering design, decision making and environment assessment were reviewed. Sustainability disputes in construction projects were analyzed and owners and designers were interviewed to understand the evolvement of these issues. Key success factors of other successful integration projects were also referenced. An integration mechanism including procedures was established along with traditional design process. Four integration steps were developed: organize integration team, propose integration issues, determine acceptance criteria, and evaluate alternatives; and four integration dimensions were also identified: appeals, decision making and execution, stakeholders, and experts. A matrix was formed by the four integration steps and four dimensions. A rigor index was proposed to measure the quality of the integration process. Finally, the mechanism was tested on a construction project with sustainability controversy to check its validity. The study results show that the integration mechanism can help incorporate sustainability issues and achieve consensus if followed rigorously. The integration matrix systematically examines the eight key integration factors under the four dimensions such as integration techniques, data quality, as well as the representativeness and participation of stakeholders and experts. The rigor index, or level of following the mechanism, can explain the quality in integrating sustainability issues into engineering design. The mechanism provides a useful tool for the owners and designers to cope with the sustainability decision making difficulties.