Sustainability and Infrastructure – the role of rating tools in driving sustainable outcomes

Abstract

Infrastructure investment must not only respond to society’s immediate needs, but also to societal and environmental challenges including population growth, climate change, increased urbanisation, resource constraints and issues related to equity and economic participation. Sustainability considerations are increasingly important in the design, construction and operation of infrastructure and following widespread application of sustainability rating tools for building infrastructure, similar industry-based tools for civil infrastructure have emerged. While there has been substantive research on the building sustainability rating tools and some analysis of civil infrastructure tools design and use, the research lacked a broad based analysis of the civil infrastructure rating tools. Conclusions from rating tool analysis has often failed to take into account ‘real world’ use and its flow-on effects. Actual experience of those specifying and using the tools was often missing. This thesis aims to fill gaps in the research on the civil infrastructure tools with a particular focus on identifying how these tools are being used in practice and on proposing new tools and methods to improve that use. The thesis adopts a multi-method, international scale research approach, which examines multiple aspects of rating tool design and use, the context in which the tools develop and operate, and tool links with the evolving sustainability agenda. The CEEQUAL, Envision, Infrastructure Sustainability and Greenroads rating tools were examined and compared to provide insight into tool coverage, application and bias. Analysis of 119 case studies from rated infrastructure projects and 63 interviews with infrastructure owners and tool users in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and North America provided substantive findings on outcomes from tool use, factors affecting outcomes and wider influence of the tools. The research resulted in development of a context map and three models, which provide conceptual frameworks and practical tools for infrastructure owners, sustainability advisors and other industry professionals to develop strategies for using the rating tools to address the challenges of sustainability and infrastructure. For academic researchers the thesis demonstrates a holistic approach to rating tool research and contextualises the tools as “processes of change” at the individual, organisational and industry level.