A Conceptual Optimization Framework to Solve the Cost, LEED Credits, and Time Tradeoff for LEED Certified Buildings

摘要

The construction industry has been always striving to balance the tradeoffs between different project factors such as time, cost, and quality. With the advent of building sustainability initiatives and the introduction of "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design" (LEED) certification, it became evident that there is an added tradeoff between sustainability (represented by the LEED credits), duration, and cost, associated with each project. This paper discusses previous tradeoffs in the construction industry and classifies the tradeoff between time, cost, and sustainability as a multi-objective optimization problem. An optimization model is constructed with test values as the test data for the model. The model follows a quantitative methodology and aims to minimize the time and cost for a user-defined set of relative importance factors (RIF) for time, cost, and LEED points. The results obtained are a near-optimal set of values showing acceptable material selection for each activity in the test project that maximizes the LEED points and minimizes the project cost and duration. These optimal values change when the user-defined RIF is changed, hence making the model user-friendly and flexible to use.