Research Aim: The aim of this research study is to reduce the waste arising on construction site and to promote awareness in the small, medium and large construction sites regarding environmental issues, best practice and use of recycled and reclaimed materials in order to save transportation cost, disposal cost, landfill cost.
This study of research identifies the behaviour of waste production on various stages of the construction and concentrate on how waste can be minimized on site.
If the amount of construction waste going to landfill can be reduced then,(i) environmental damage from quarrying can be cut.(ii) energy consumption or transportation can be reduced. (iii) landfill capacity can be conserved (iv) profits on construction can be increased through reduced disposal cost.
According to this research in order to sort out these issues and form a proper and effectiveness waste minimisation initiatives, this research sets out certain process, methodologies in order to achieve it.
Research Hypotheses: Construction waste managements plans, reduction, reuse, recycling of materials can form an effective waste minimizing initiatives.
Methodology
The research methodology and process is described to provide better understanding of dissertation and related research work. According to Fellows. R and Liu. A (1997), research project does not occur in vacuum, it take place in specific environment with researchers interest, experience and expertise etc. This paragraph illustrates that how the research work will be discovered, studied and investigated. The reason to author for choosing topic of managing and minimising construction waste in UK Construction industry comes from author’s background and interest in particular subject. The authors aim to to reduce the waste arising on construction site and to promote awareness in the small, medium and large construction sites. It would be also helps to focus on subject of how waste can be minimized and recyle on site.
After explaining and determined proposal of research study, it will be important to identify appropriate research methodology, which will helps to satisfy the aims of the paper as, planning is major key for success of research. Research methodology provides essential foundation for success of research so it considered as major part of dissertation project with collecting and selecting data formats.
In another way it may also defined as branch of philosophy concerned with the science of method.
Methodology may be understood as an overall method to investigate aim of research study satisfactorily within the context of research for particular dissertation. (Holt, G. D., 1998,) sates that choice of methodology is primarily depend on specific research objective thus understanding of science of methods is important to select appropriate research methodology.
There are two types of research strategy called as ‘quantitative research’ and ‘qualitative research’. Fellows. R and Liu. A (1997), suggest that quantitative approach try to collect real data and study findings of any research accordance with theory. Creswell (1994, page no 85), a quantitative research defined as “a human or social problem based on theory or testing a hypothesis and can be measured with number, analysed with statistical procedure so as to determine theory or hypothesis hold is true”. So in quantitative data analysis objective is to test the theory rather than developing it. Again Fellows. R and Liu. (1997) states that there are three main approaches for quantitative research which are nothing but: questionnaires, interviews and experiments.
Qualitative approach of research understands the people’s knowledge gained by the world as a group and as a individual, thus qualitative research is all about the brief understanding of options and views of peoples investigated and data collected in such research may be unstructured and of raw form but considered as a rich and detailed in content of scope of research. According to Cohen and Manion (1994), there are number of multiple methods for investigation and measurements of factors such as teaching method, academic achievements, practical and social skills, personal interest, interpersonal relationships and community spirit etc.
Before carrying out the main survey, A Pilot study was performed to study the relative weighting of a set of principal factors affecting the choice of construction waste sorting methods. The factors are (1) availability of site space; (2) cost; (3) labour; (4) disruption to normal site activities; (5) market for recyclables; (6) environmental benefit; (7) management effort; and (8) waste sort ability.
Data collection: Data can be collected using various methods such as questionnaire,postal questionnaire,structural interview literature review, distribution and collection of questionnaire, interview process, case studies. Information regarding duty of care which the holder of waste carries is been to gain through this data collection survey.
Data analysis: It is important in research study as purpose of analysis is to provide complete understanding and evidence of relationships in context of construction project management, which will help to managing and minizing construction waste.According to Fellows. R and Liu. (1997), the qualitative analysis of data collection seeks to determine the meaning of the data collected. Data given by qualitative analysis is more or less coded by group of respondents and categories, which gives a surrounding of categorised data against the group. This also pointed out that quantitative data analysis only extends the approach of qualitative analysis to yield numerical values of categorized data such as frequency, rating, ranking etc; this may lead to more statistical analysis.
Managing and Mminizing construction waste as Quantative approach: Extending the life of building can reduce the volume of construction waste. When the building is demolished or in construction process goin on the materials used in it be released and remain on site. At that stage Quantative prevention is limited to avoiding the disposal of more waste than is needed.This materials are used by applying the waste management plans as major step of this research methodology:
Resources / Restraints / Limitations
The information needed for this research study is taken through resources such from, Literatures review, past & present reports, case studies, presenations & seminars made by expertize engineers, related to this research area. Data related to construction waste generation and its managing process in past, presernt can be collected through various interviews, surveys, studies.
The hardware system of the bar-coding application consists of the bar-code scanner and the computer. The previous research shows that the amount of construction construction waste generated on site is produced by workers. Attitude of workers towards their work, including their enthusiasm and collectivism is the most in terms in waste generation.
The authors introduced the crew-based IRP thereafter in order to meet the demand of on-site construction material management. It is important to establish an on-site construction material management system to encourage workers to use materials carefully and efficiently, and to enhance their enthusiasm and collectivism by rewarding them according to their good performances in saving materials through reducing operational mistakes, returning unused materials for re-use or recycle, etc.
The software such as Microsoft office project , Microsoft Excell , should be used to formulate the data collected by various ways.
Limitations : As construction waste management in broad concept for UK construction industry, there are many projects going on in framing different regulations, process in managing and minimising this waste in UK construction industry.The author is worried about information collected from structural interview, as telephonic conversation is adopted which has same techniques and rule as of face to face interview. As communication is not easy on telephone, information collected may have some confusion. As topic is broad to collect inforamtion it takes time to explain the way of questionnaire and visit to companies that doing projects under this research area.
Postal Questionnaire technique of data collection is may be the most commonly used and author felt it most sutaible for carrying out the surveys that provides well defined objectives and give specific response for necessary frame questionaire. It economical, fast and good consultation method.
Research Beneficiaries / Dissemination
This research benefits in reducing the amount of waste generating on site. It imparts the continuous chain of reuse and recycling the waste materials along with proper disposing on landfill sites. It also prevents fly tipping.Using probable waste management services on site help any organization to comply with environment legislation reduces cost and assist in creating a positive image of business.This research illustrates proper site waste managenment plans (SWMP) which is beneficial to identify the different types of waste that will be producing during project and it note any changes in the design and materials specification that seeks to minimise this waste. SWMP should consider how to reuse, recycle or recover the different wastes produced by the project and it records the quantity of waste produced.
The main benefits of this research study are :
1. It results in greater resource efficiency in the construction sector.
2. Improve reuse and recycling rates, reduces fly tipping and site accidents.
3. Lower disposal cost i.e. reduced skips hire, landfill tax & gate fees.
4. Avoids waste transportation cost.
5. Greater reuse /recycling of materials on site saves raw material purchased.
6. Lower level of material wastage.
