Towards sustainable reuse of building services in office buildings : a framework for assessing the reuse potential of building services products, considering remedial work requirements and environmental, social, and financial performance
(2025)
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- As cities increasingly adopt circular economy principles, reusing building products—particularly building services such as plumbing, heating/cooling, ventilation, and electrical systems—presents significant opportunities for enhancing environmental, social, and economic sustainability. Yet current assessments remain limited: they often fail to account for the condition of reused products in combination with their life cycle performance, overlook social implications, and lack practical, project-specific tools for early-stage design and decision-making. This thesis addresses these gaps by developing a holistic framework and an Excel-based tool to evaluate the reuse potential of building services products. The framework systematically integrates product condition with life cycle performance and embeds environmental, social, and financial pillars in line with UNEP guidelines. It allows designers to identify necessary remedial actions, quantify the impacts of reuse versus conventional replacement, and compare multiple reuse pathways across different sustainability dimensions. The tool is designed to support early-stage design decisions by providing clear guidance, identifying potential trade-offs, and facilitating context-sensitive evaluations. The framework was applied to three case studies: reuse ex situ of an air-to-water chiller, reuse in situ of a circular air duct, and reuse in-place of a recessed luminaire, each involving products with typical defects. Results indicated clear environmental, social, and financial benefits for the luminaire, whereas outcomes for chillers and ducts were more context-dependent, influenced by available reconditioning options, local policies, and operational constraints. Four parameters emerged as critical to reuse viability: lifespan ratio, input power ratio, new product lifespan, and local electricity mix, with energy consumption and carbon impacts most sensitive to input power and electricity mix. Despite partial automation and simplified uncertainty analysis, the framework provides practical, project-specific guidance that enables building designers to make more informed, sustainable, and circular design decisions, contributing to a more effective integration of reuse strategies in urban building projects.
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Loreau, S. (2025). Towards sustainable reuse of building services in office buildings : a framework for assessing the reuse potential of building services products, considering remedial work requirements and environmental, social, and financial performance. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/272863