Minimizing construction material waste by modelling order quantity and on-site rejection parameters

Abstract

Construction material wastages are one of the biggest problems associated with waste management in developing countries like India. This work aims to study the occurrence, causes and degree of construction material resource wastage during the course of a residential construction project in India. Different causes of material wastage and top materials being wasted are identified and ranked using experience-based data from the construction industry personnel. Further, correlation analysis between causes and degree of wastagesrevealed a highly positive relationship. Regression analysis is used to model the daily production quantities and on-site wastage parameters to obtain standard equations for prediction of material wastages. The models developed are limited to work accurately only for the RMC plant from where data is collected during the course of this study. Similar models can be developed for different RMC plants with other techniques. Wastages can be reduced by optimizing the work processes in construction industry and recycling the unused materials wherever needed. In this study, similar kind of practice was adopted for minimizing concrete wastages associated with RMC and construction site just by optimizing the daily order quantities. A simple and standard tool namely, Economic order quantity (EOQ) were computed for the daily production of RMC plant as per site demand on daily basis. The differences in waste reduction in usual production quantity and as per EOQ practice were significant to reveal that the tools can be effectively utilized to reduce huge degree of wastages, diverting construction practices towards sustainability.