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Incorporating sustainability in construction can result in desirable building attributes and project life cycle. The Leadership in Engineering and Environmental Design (LEED®) Rating System helps project teams make the right green building decisions for their projects through a process. However, in current practice, project teams do not have a systematic procedure or tool for choosing the LEED credits appropriate for a particular project. The researchers have developed a tool, which support the LEED integrative process during a charrette, and developed an optimization model that can be utilized to assist project teams determine which credits to pursue for LEED certification, taking into account potential benefits associated with any LEED credit. The tool enables owners to incorporate sustainability in construction by helping the project teams make the right green building decisions for their projects through an integrated procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modularization is a well-established technique in which a portion of site-based work is exported to fabrication shops, thereby contributing to an improved construction. When modularization is combined with design standardization, according to the literature of the shipbuilding and manufacturing industries, the result is a leveraging opportunity. Such an approach can incorporate all the benefits from both design standardization and modularization and can constitute a strategy for augmenting modularization. This paper addresses a leveraging opportunity for modularization augmentation by examining how modularization and design standardization relate to one another in the industrial sector. A research team comprised of industrial and academic members identified standard modules as well as a modular standardized plant (MSP) as distinct approaches to combining modularization and design standardization. The research further identified 10 types of economic advantages and 3 types of economic disadvantages when the two are combined. Consequently, the paper documents case studies to provide further insight into the characteristics of modular projects with standard design, the assessment results of its impact and benefits, and the lessons learned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]