Multi-participant construction waste demolition and transportation decision-making system

Abstract Construction waste management involves multiple participants and processes. Although existing research has developed a building information model (BIM) based estimation system, the challenge of selecting a transportation and demolition plan that provides overall construction waste management from the perspective of multiple participants remains, and how multiple participants can coordinate the overall process is still unclear. This paper develops a BIM and cost-optimisation-based decision-making system for construction and demolition waste (C&DW) transportation and demolition that is capable of coordinating involved C&DW participants and suggesting a cost-effective transportation and demolition plan. Firstly, we developed a transportation plan decision model based on the optimal cost principle. The model is capable of determining the optimal demolition company, transport company and disposal company through cost analysis, and a demolition plan decision model was developed based on the work efficiency analysis of the selected participants. Secondly, we developed a decision-making system that extracts material type and volume information about C&DW emissions and emission types from BIM models. Then the system provides a cost-effective transportation plan and formulates a demolition plan that can avoid the accumulation of C&DW on site based on the decision models. A case study of the system is presented, and the results show that the system can realise the information flow of all links in the construction waste management and improve the efficiency of decision-making concerning construction waste.