Reducing Construction Waste

The construction industry permeates most of our economic sectors and transforms various resources into infrastructure to support socio-economic development. However, despite its relevance for society, construction activities negatively impact our natural environment.

Construction waste, for example, has become an important issue due to its increasing generation and potential adverse effects on the environment. Per the USEPA, as much as 30% of all building materials delivered to a typical construction site can end up as waste, where the average new construction project yields 4.3 pounds of waste per square foot of building area. As much as 75% of that generated waste (~80 tons for a 50,000 sf building) ends up in landfills, totaling nearly 650 million tons of construction related waste annually.

Waste management in construction activities needs to start from the design and procurement phases and then extend to onsite strategies. Through the application of industrialized construction approaches, a meaningful portion of that construction waste can be eliminated at the source by employing off-site manufacturing principles and prefabrication solutions, significantly reducing the quantity of building materials delivered to a typical construction site.

Overcast Innovations employs a manufacturing mindset and solution to organize and consolidate the 15 or more mechanical and electrical devices typically found in the ceiling space via our Cloud ceiling appliances. A typical Cloud appliance hosts an average of seven field devices, that are engineered and manufactured offsite, reducing the quantity of field labor required to install and commission these devices by over 50%.

The benefits of a manufacturing mindset and productized approach extend beyond labor productivity improvements and includes a significant decrease in the amount of building materials that need to be shipped, handled and staged on a construction site, supporting the reduction of construction-generated waste that moves from the jobsite to our landfills.