Improvement Management and Predictive Volume Estimation of Plastic Waste at a Swedish Construction Company

Abstract

Limited space at construction sites is one of the most common problems leading to low levels of plastic recycling. Therefore, this study aims to identify operational solutions to improve plastic waste management at a single construction site of a Swedish construction company, while also uncovering and enhancing change and improvement processes within the wider organisation. To achieve this, the first objective is to develop a model to predictively quantify plastic waste volumes and the required storage area they occupy to improve waste management planning. The study takes a case study approach with interviews with actors from a large Swedish construction company and construction site observations. Input data required for the model was shown to be readily accessible through Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) provided by suppliers. Consultations with suppliers produced supplementary data for products where no EPD was provided or if the sought data was missing. A scenario analysis showed how choices made by management at the construction site can impact the space required to store plastic waste. The second objective is to study change and knowledge management at the construction company to facilitate anchoring of the developed model as well as future improvement projects. It was shown that the company took an unstructured approach to most change and improvement efforts. This caused potentially beneficial changes and improvements to hardly leave their pilot project and the relevant knowledge to only be shared by a small network of management staff. Management staff could go out of their way to champion a change within the organisation, however this was mostly fuelled by intrinsic motivation and required much individual responsibility with no guarantee of success. Therefore, different management concepts and frameworks were proposed, most notably, the concept of continuous improvement. Successful use of concepts such as the PDCA-cycle could bring structure to the company’s change and improvement efforts shifting their improvements from happening discreetly and disorganised to continuously and planned.