Circular Construction : A Study of Reuse Practices in the Construction Industry from a Consultant´s Perspective

Sammanfattning: In light of the need to reduce resource usage and mitigate the climate impact of the Swedish construction industry, the adoption of reusing secondary materials has gained significant attention as an alternative construction process. This approach not only addresses environmental concerns, but also aims to transition from the prevailing "make-take-waste" system of resource management. Reuse, recognized as a circular method, holds promise for the construction industry's efforts to reduce the embodied environmental impact from construction. However, the identification of key actors responsible for spearheading the implementation of reuse to make it both economically and environmentally beneficial remains vague, creating an opportunity for consultancy firms to offer their expertise and knowledge in this domain.  This thesis explores the opportunities and challenges related to the implementation of reuse in the construction industry to formulate possibilities for consultants to introduce reuse in projects. This is done from the context of a Swedish consultancy company by using qualitative methods including a literature review and semi-structured interviews, to investigate different views and experiences of implementing reuse among a variety of actors in the construction process. Based on the results, analysis and discussion, it can be concluded that the project dependent nature of implementing reuse creates a division between the more optimistic views, who see benefits with initiating reuse in most projects, and the more restrained views, which raises the concern of how the benefits of reuse can be misinterpreted. There are two identified challenges that need to be met in order to make the benefits evident for all actors; to enhance the market for reuse in the industry through economic incentives and company driven initiatives, and to change the industry's mindset by prioritising repurposing of buildings and putting weight on coordination in the early stages of construction projects. Consultants can have a supporting role in the early stages of projects by coordinating the logistics and management of secondary materials, and consequently ease the pressure for other actors in the value chain. It is additionally shown that even if there is a wide range of expertise within the consultancy company, it can be hard to manage in order to maximise the benefits of reuse in projects.