Life cycle thinking: a study of aplications on building projects

Despite its benefits, building construction causes significant impacts on the environment. In this context, Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) has become a reliable instrument to improve environmental and socioeconomic performance through the construction life cycle. This research aims to perform a discussion focusing on those publications that consider the triple bottom line on building projects through the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA), Life Cycle Cost (LCC), and Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA). The purpose was reached with the study of 91 peer-reviewed articles included in the Bibliographic Portfolio. The results show that a great part of the publications belongs to developed countries and that most of the articles present a local focus applied through case studies. Although sustainable development must include environmental, economic, and social dimen-sions, most studies implemented only environmental assessment, and the social sustainability dimension presents a greater lack. It was concluded that LCT approaches offer an objective assessment of sustainability through LCA, S-LCA, LCC, and LCSA. This paper can help students, designers, engineers, researchers, and decision-makers that need to im-prove or begin studies on sustainable construction.