Environmentally Sustainable Public Procurement of Construction Projects – Implementing Circularity Approach

Abstract

Construction projects are frequently used to boost local economic development without consideration of the long-term sustainability impacts. Via implementing circularity approach in public procurement, the research sought to identify best practices for greening construction projects by conducting in-depth interviews with stakeholders to collect their views about green public procurement (GPP) criteria in an EU country. The paper demonstrates how circular public procurement can be implemented for construction projects and which phases of procurement are more promising in terms of minimizing environmental impacts. Our results show that the design and build phases should be procured separately in order to successfully reduce environmental impacts in circular construction projects. The planning phase should ideally be carried out by an interdisciplinary team that establishes the right green public procurement criteria for selecting the designer, the construction firm and developing technical specifications.