Predicting the significance of environmental issues in construction operations

Construction activities have severe impacts on the natural environment. Environmental management systems (EMSs) are developed to formalize procedures for managing and reducing the environmental impacts resulting from any products/activities/services. Construction companies implement EMSs in order to maintain compliance with environmental regulations, lower environmental costs, reduce risks, improve health and safety, train employees, develop indicators of impact, and improve environmental performance. An effective EMS promises several benefits to construction companies, which include open markets and reduced trade barriers, enhanced credibility among customers and peers, reductionof harmful impacts to the environment, improved relationships with stakeholders, increased competitive advantage, etc. Although construction has harmful impacts on the environment and the implementation of an EMS offers several advantages, construction companies typically do not have thorough and internationally certified EMSs. Nonetheless, a growing awareness of the adverse impacts of construction process on the environment has created a greater need to take environmental factors into account and more construction players have begun to pay attention to environmental management. Thus, the understanding of EMS in construction sites has become an absolute necessity now. This paper aims to identify the basic elements of EMSs, the relationship to the ISO 14001 standard, and the importance of implementing an EMS for construction companies. A simple methodology to determine the significance level of the environmental aspects of products/activities/services within a construction site is also proposed.