A Decision-Making Framework for the Built Facilities’ End-of-Life from Sustainability and Circular Economy Viewpoints

Massive quantities of Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW) are being produced by the building and civil infrastructure sectors, representing 3.4 million tons of construction materials sent to landfills per year in Canada. Reducing this waste stream calls for a paradigm shift from the current linear to a circular supply chain of construction materials and components. The shift toward circular economy (CE), however, will require new technologies and practices at the End-of-Life (EoL) stage of built facilities. Thus, the aim of this study is to identify the main decision-making processes and decision criteria at the EoL stage of built facilities. To this end, the study first defines the sub-phases under the EoL stage (deconstruction/demolition, transport, waste processing, and disposal) based on a review of 51 articles. Secondly, the most frequent decision problems and the common alternatives for such problems are identified for each sub-phase. Lastly, a set of criteria is identified to assist in the decision-making problems at the EoL stage. The main findings of the study include a set of high-level and sub-criteria addressing matters related to economics, environment, society, condition of materials, and regulations for each of the identified decision problems. Over 70 criteria were reviewed generating a set of 9 main criteria and 17 sub-criteria. The literature also presented some deficiencies related to criteria measuring (quantitative or qualitative), as well as a lack of regulatory criteria. Overall, this framework can facilitate and hasten the selection of the best alternative for the main decision problems at EoL stage, taking into consideration sustainability and CE.