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With the increasing demand for sustainable developments, higher education should focus on teaching both sustainable buildings and infrastructure systems. This study aims to investigate the existing sustainable infrastructure (SI) teaching efforts in sustainability courses; identify best practices to integrate SI throughout bachelor’s and master’s programs under the construction management (CM) curricula; and propose guidelines for students to obtain Envision sustainability professional (ENV SP) credential during sustainability education.

This study conducted keywords search within the sustainability course descriptions under the American Council for Construction Education accredited CM curricula to locate SI topics. Additionally, this research collected inputs from the Envision Academic Committee members to develop a matrix representing the best practices for integrating SI in higher education and provided a guide with a step-by-step procedure to obtain ENV SP credentials.

This study identified a gap regarding the availability of SI education and offered best practices on how CM curricula might nurture such knowledge. Phase I highlighted that only two CM programs taught infrastructure sustainability, and three programs offered sustainability credentialing processes under a bachelor’s degree. Phase II developed a framework that offered a variety of pedagogical approaches and outlined the process for obtaining the ENV SP certificate for CM students in the freshman, sophomore, junior and senior years.

The findings of this study can facilitate CM education to create awareness among the future workforce and encourage them to establish skills pertaining to the economic, social and environmental implications while designing SI.

Construction education rarely addressed the importance of disseminating knowledge on infrastructure equity, thus impeding progress toward creating equitable and sustainable developments. This study aims to investigate the existing sustainability courses under the American Council for Construction Education (ACCE) accredited construction management (CM) programs to examine the integration of infrastructure equity topics and assess improvement in CM students’ knowledge and awareness to address this issue through an intervention.

To achieve these objectives, this research reviewed the sustainability course descriptions of the ACCE-accredited undergraduate and graduate CM curricula. Furthermore, the study implemented a workshop within a CM sustainability course that taught the students about the key concepts of infrastructure equity as well as how to address this issue by leveraging the Envision infrastructure rating system.

The course review results showed that most sustainability courses lack topics such as infrastructure equity and social sustainability. Moreover, the analysis of pre- and postworkshop surveys indicated that guided training could improve the students’ understanding as well as boost their confidence to address and mitigate infrastructure inequity issues.

The findings of the study are valuable for increasing awareness of infrastructure equity and facilitating the future construction workforce with the required expertise to develop equitable infrastructure systems.

This paper aims to introduce a case-based module teaching sustainable engineering, linking the Envision rating system with behavioral decision science. Three complete modules are publicly available in a repository for any instructor to adapt, use and review.

A case study was written about the Tucannon River Wind Farm, a project-certified Gold by the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure’s Envision™ rating system. The case was used as the basis for an in-class PowerPoint module to achieve student learning outcomes related to sustainability.

Before and after surveys showed significant (p < 0.05) learning increases. Word clouds show changes in student perceptions of sustainable design. Rubric scoring of writing assignments and concept maps yielded valuable insights and improvements and demonstrated the overall validity of the module approach.

Modules lasting only one or two class days must be well-integrated into courses and curricula to promote greater learning value. Concept mapping may be a useful addition but involves a learning curve for both instructors and students.

By offering instructors access to a set of case-based modules, it becomes more practical for them to teach about sustainable infrastructure and decision-making.

The module exemplifies a project owner and an engineering firm strongly committed to social and environmental sustainability. Envision’s Quality of Life and Leadership categories emphasize community well-being, involvement and collaboration.

This module offers a unique transdisciplinary focus meeting several needs in engineering education on sustainability, complex problems and decision-making.

BE2ST-In-Highways is a framework for assessing the social impact of reusing materials in pavement building, using the Pavement Life-Cycle Assessment Tool for Environmental and Economic Impacts (PaLATE) and life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA). ENVISION is a two-stage assessment method with four levels of certification: bronze award, silver award, gold award, and platinum award. Stantec published the Green Guide for Roads in 2008 as a marketing tool to highlight its commitment to sustainable development (SD), and the certification policy was created using the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification policy. As part of their first-year requirements, Stantec and a team of Worcester Polytechnic Institute students created another ‘Green Guide for Roads’ in 2009 to integrate previously missing components of the certification guidelines. GreenPave was developed by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation as an SD certification framework based on the Greenroads and GreenLITES SD certification frameworks. Specifications are classified into three types: repair activities, new development projects, and credit for evident and clear criteria. The Greenroads SD certification process reintroduces SD ideas into highway building by awarding points to projects that effectively integrate SD objectives. I-LAST is a tool developed by the Illinois Department of Transportation, American Consulting Engineers Council (ACEC), and Illinois Road and Transportation Builders Association (IRTBA) to analyse SD principles in road infrastructure building. INVEST (Infrastructure Voluntary Assessment Sustainability Tool) is designed to be simple to use and includes four stages of a project. Scorecards for pavement, basic rural, basic urban, extended rural, extended urban, and custom are included. CEEQUAL (Sustainability Assessment and Awards for Civil Engineering, Infrastructure, Landscaping, and the Public Realm) was established to improve infrastructure sustainability and award projects to organizations that address environmental concerns in a productive and effective manner. It is managed by CEEQUAL Ltd. and is based on three SD principles: environment, economics, and labelling the social component of SD with access. Customized scorecards may be used when a project does not fit into one of the pre-defined scorecards. The framework was initially created for the United Kingdom (UK) but has now been revised to be worldwide relevant and includes two categories of projects: domestic (UK and Ireland) projects and foreign initiatives. It also offers six project awards. This chapter reviewed frameworks, models, and guidelines for sustainable infrastructure projects, emphasizing the Be²st-In-Highway rating system, ENVISION certification policies, green guide for road rating systems, greenlights certification system or policy, Greenpaves rating system, Greenroads rating system, I-LAST certification tools, invest rating tools, CEEQUAL certification system, and stars rating tools.

Infrastructure projects play a significant role in community development. Infrastructure consists of many subcategories such as roads, bridges, railways, airports, communication infrastructure and harbors. The expressway is an essential part of modern transportation infrastructure. Due to its span and complexity, expressway construction results in several environmental impacts comparatively higher than typical road construction. In that event, environmental sustainability assessment in expressway construction and determining environmental measures to address those impacts is essential. Therefore, this research intends to investigate the environmental measures applicable to expressway projects in Sri Lanka.

This study involves a comparative analysis of different environmental impacts validated through expert interviews. The data required to perform the analysis were extracted through expert interviews and the Battelle method.

The findings revealed the importance of environmental indicators for expressway projects in Sri Lanka by assigning weightages. The Construction Phase received the highest weightage among three themes indicating that the construction phase causes greater environmental impact in expressway construction. Furthermore, the Site Maintenance Plan and Tree Compensating received the highest weightages under indicators.

The study makes an original contribution through the identification of indicators that lead to the improvement of environmental sustainability in expressway projects in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, the use of the Battelle method within the context of measuring environmental sustainability of expressways projects in general — and within the context of Sri Lanka — is a novel research approach.

Several studies have shown that climate change is a threat to sustainable human living and high consumption of energy by buildings is a contributory factor. However, green practices in buildings have been proved as one of the successful technologies to mitigate global warming. Previous studies have shown lax green practices in developing countries’ buildings, but how far concerning green certification of buildings in Nigeria is yet to be explored. Therefore, this paper investigated the barriers to green certification of buildings (GCB). Also, the paper proposed a model for promoting GCB in Nigeria.

Eighteen experts with green building certification knowledge were engaged across three of Nigeria’s cities (Benin City, Abuja and Lagos) via scheduled WhatsApp video and teams calls. Collated interview data were analysed and presented in themes.

Findings show that there is an absence of a framework to promote GCB in Nigeria. Hence, GCB is low across the states. Twelve main sub-themes emerged as the barriers to GCB in Nigeria. Also, eight key sub-themes emerged as the possible concepts that can be used to improve GCB in Nigeria and formulated into a proposed framework to promote GCB in Nigeria.

This paper is limited to GCB in Nigeria and only 18 participants were engaged. Thus, this paper suggests that a mixed-methods approach should be conducted in future studies with wider coverage. This may assist to validate the paper’s findings.

Findings from this paper will stir up practitioners in green building and influence the promotion of GCB in the sector. As part of this study’s implications, suggestions through the paper’s proposed framework will benefit Nigeria’s policymakers to make decisions towards achieving GCB. This can be achieved via the proposed framework to promote the concept across Nigeria.

This paper is probably the first that attempted to investigate the barriers and proffer policy solutions via a framework to promote GCB in Nigeria and by extension in other developing countries.

This study uses computer-aided design to improve the ecological and environmental sustainability of early-stage landscape designs. Urban expansion on open land and natural habitats has led to a decline in biodiversity and increased climate change impacts, affecting urban inhabitants' quality of life and well-being. While sustainability indicators have been employed to assess the performance of buildings and neighbourhoods, landscape designs' ecological and environmental sustainability has received comparatively less attention, particularly in early-design stages where applying sustainability approaches is impactful.

The authors propose a computation framework for evaluating key landscape sustainability indicators and providing real-time feedback to designers. The method integrates spatial indicators with widely recognized sustainability rating system credits. A specialized tool was developed for measuring biomass optimization, precipitation management and urban heat mitigation, and a proof-of-concept experiment tested the tool's effectiveness on three Mediterranean neighbourhood-level designs.

The results show a clear connection between the applied design strategy to the indicator behaviour. This connection enhances the ability to establish sustainability benchmarks for different types of landscape developments using parametric design.

The study allows non-expert designers to measure and embed landscape sustainability early in the design stages, thus lowering the entry level for incorporating biodiversity enhancement and climate mitigation approaches.

This study expands the parametric vocabulary for measuring landscape sustainability by introducing spatial ecosystem services and architectural sustainability indicators on a unified platform, enabling the integration of critical climate and biodiversity-loss solutions earlier in the development process.

The CEEQUAL certification system promotes sustainable development (SD) principles in infrastructure construction, with 12 categories of criteria and indicators. ENVISION assigns 60 points to five categories, while Green Guide is divided into seven classifications. SD certification requires 11 requirements, including an ecological assessment procedure, life-cycle costing assessment, quality control plan, noise mitigation plan, waste management plan, pollution prevention plan, low impact development, pavement management system, site maintenance plan, and educational outreach. SD certification technique provides 8 critical criteria, 153 standards, 17 stringent prerequisites, and 8 categories of points. Culp (2011) developed a grading system to incorporate SD principles into infrastructure projects; Shen et al. (2011) explored significant assessment parameters for the SD of infrastructure projects using the fuzzy set method; Lui and Cui (2012) studied SD frameworks for building projects, Montgomery et al. (2014) and Lim (2009) identified 77 major SD indicators based on a comprehensive review of the relevant literature, and the Transport Division of New South Wales established a Transportation Project Sustainability Framework to ensure the long-term viability of their transportation network and the continuous improvement of their environmental and sustainability performance. Assah Amiril (2014) revealed a global network of 27 SD criteria produced by professionals, for-profit and non-profit organizations, divided into five groups: ecological, financial, sociological, engineering, asset use, and project management. The most important details in this study are that 57 indicators were categorized into eight types, weighted according to their respective impacts, and the influence of each component on SD was evaluated using a 100-dimensional scale. This study investigated the eight criteria and the impact of three additional criteria (public participation, climate change response, and stakeholder management). This chapter examined the criteria and indicators of SD criteria and indicators for road infrastructure development in developing countries. The most important findings are that the CEEQUAL, Ugwu, Haupt, and Lim models are the most comprehensive theoretical models of SD requirements for infrastructure design, and that all frameworks and models promote the sharing, promotion, and acknowledgement of SD concepts.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a pilot application of the Sustainable Transportation Analysis & Rating System (STARS), and highlight how a sustainability rating system can be used to promote sustainable urban development through a university–city partnership. STARS is an example of a second-generation “green” rating system focused on transportation planning, design, operations and maintenance.

In Fall 2013, James Madison University (JMU) initiated a STARS pilot demonstration using a local corridor that connects the university and the city of Harrisonburg. The pilot’s purposes were to develop attainable transportation-development targets, evaluate infrastructure and programmatic options in the context of a credit-based system and demonstrate a decision-making framework centered on sustainability optimization. The paper provides an overview of the STARS framework and the pilot’s collaborations, analysis, findings and recommendations for credits across sustainability dimensions.

Upon applying the rating system, the research team found that STARS may initially be easier to integrate into a comprehensive transportation planning process than a corridor-level evaluation due to data needs, in-house expertise and planning timelines for campus and city developments. A campus-wide master plan based on STARS would enable a university and a city to apply sustainability principles to their physical and/or policy interfaces to systemically create change and achieve quantifiable targets.

The STARS framework provides a novel approach for integrating multiple stakeholders (faculty, the university and city staff, students and community members) in a process of capacity building, evaluating options, policy-making, implementation and performance monitoring. The JMU pilot is the first application of STARS at a university and the only US East Coast application to date.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of using a metric to measure user acceptability of a system prior to its implementation.

Empirical research is carried within PISO^®, an existing process improvement method that harnesses the expertise of system users in redesigning systems. A metric called “warm glow” is trialled, designed to test the level of user acceptance to system change.

The paper finds that the “warm glow” metric was applied to a number of system redesigns applying the PISO method, to check user opinion of the existing system against the proposed system. It was found that use of the “warm glow” metric does give a measured approach to gauging acceptability. Two possible influences were considered during the study. The first was the Halo effect which suggests an optimal stage in the redesign at which to rate processes in terms of user opinion. Results in this case appeared consistent irrespective of time. The second was the Hawthorn effect which suggests that simply by being “singled out” to redesign the system, user opinions will be positively biased. Findings in this respect were inconclusive. The need is noted for further research into possible effects.

It is likely that such a technique could by used more widely than within the PISO method.

The paper provides a means of testing user acceptance to systems via rating of system processes.