الفهرس 
Sustainable development concept
GREEN PYRAMID RATING SYSTEMOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Life cycle assessment (LCA) has become an essential tool to determine the environmental impacts of construction materials and products. LCA is a very effective strategy in analyzing the impact of different structures during its life cycle, considering economic, environmental, and sustainability aspects. The use of this technique helps structural engineers, contractors, and owners in predicting environmental impacts throughout the structure’s life cycle. LCA is an essential tool which encourages civil and structural engineers to reduce the embodied energy of any structure. The major stages of LCA study are raw material acquisition, materials manufacture, production, use/reuse/maintenance, and waste management.
Recently, the Ministry of Housing and the Housing & Building National Research Center (HBRC) in Egypt have shown great attention to this topic. This is demonstrated by the establishment of the National Council for Housing Minister Green Architecture to develop policies that lead to the dissemination and application of the idea of green architecture. Nowadays, several manufacturers have developed a new technique called “3D panel system” (i.e., Enbuil panel system, EPS) which is recommended for low rise buildings (up to three stories height).
This research aims to emphasize the value added to the construction sector by using EPS during the construction phases. A case study is used to demonstrate the benefits of the proposed system by comparing its environmental impacts with that of the traditional reinforced concrete system (materials/methods). The software ATHENA Impact Estimator is used to compute the environmental impacts for the two systems.
The study results related to the environmental impacts highlight that the EPS system is (70-80) % lower than the traditional system with a significant reduction in fossil fuel consumption by (70-85) %. A cost-time study is performed using Primavera software that concludes that the EPS system has lower cost and time impacts by 25% and 45%, respectively than the traditional system.
A cost-time study is performed using Primavera software concludes that the total initial cost of EPS system is approximately lowering than the cost of R.C. system by (20-25) %, as the amounts of reinforcement steel and cement of EPS system decrease of about 50 % and 32 % respectively, if compared to R.C. system. The study also indicated that a significant reduction in construction time with a range (45-60) % could be achieved when using the EPS system as an alternative to the traditional reinforced concrete/bricks system.