Mohammad Sakikhales is a lecturer in Property and Construction Management in the School of Design, his work relates to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities and SDG 12 Responsible Production and Consumption.
Mohammad’s profile:
Motivated by my background in both Architecture and Project Management, I am teaching and researching multidisciplinary areas related to digital transformation from multiple perspectives including technology, process, and sustainability perspectives.
I am specifically interested in the impact of digitalisation of built environment on sustainability including Digital Twin, BIM-based building performance simulation and using data for Circular Economy.
Circular Economy for Facility Management (CEFAM):
The CEFAM project looks to develop a data-driven decision-making framework for the circular economy in construction operation/facility management. The framework will help facility managers to implement the circular economy concept by finding the optimum solution among different products/services.
While a linear economy follows a make, use and dispose process, a Circular Economy emphasis on reduction of the use of primary materials, protecting material resources, recover material at the end of each service life and reducing the carbon footprint (EMF and MCK, 2014). In this sense, the application of the Circular Economy (CE) approach becomes fundamental to minimise environmental impact and improve material cycling within our buildings.
Although the concept has been widely applied in the built environment, much of the recent progress on this topic has been on short- and medium-lived consumer products and the focused on recycling construction and demolition waste (CDW) with little attention on the reuse of products. Moreover, the main focus of the circular economy has been on design and manufacturing and there is less focus on how this concept can be implemented during the operation phase. Therefore, there is a clear application gap in the Facility Management (FM) area. Research shows that FM could impact up to 89% of a facility's operating and embodied energy use. From the perspective of the circular economy, FM can organise and control the physical resources vector that flows through a building. Nonetheless, Facility Managers have limited access to tools and frameworks to implement the circular economy concept. In addition, some of the aspects of circular Economy during the operation phase such as flexibility and adaptability can be considered as subjective aspects and without a clear framework and can be simply disregarded which diminishes the benefits of CE implementation.
The proposed project has a clear align to the ‘Clean Growth’ Industrial Strategy Challenge by stimulating the reduction of embodied carbon in the operational stage of buildings.
Contribution to Carbon Reduction and Climate Change:
The International Energy Agency Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction 2019 found that the buildings and construction sector accounted for 36% of final energy use and 39% of energy and process-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2018, 11% of which resulted from manufacturing building materials and products such as steel, cement and glass. Mohammad’s work is essential to help address this issue to help us reduce our carbon emission to climate safe levels.
Contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals:
SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities Targets supported: 11.6, 11.b, 11c
SDG 12 Responsible Production and Consumption.
