Energy and Buildings 93 (2015) 295302

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Energy and Buildings

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enbuild

Assessment of embodied energy and global warming potential of

building construction using life cycle analysis approach: Case studies
of residential buildings in Iskandar Malaysia
Thong Jia Wen a , Ho Chin Siong a , Z.Z. Noor b,
a
b

Faculty of Built Environment, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Malaysia

Institute of Environment and Water Resource Management (IPASA), UTM, Malaysia

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 2 September 2014
Received in revised form 6 November 2014
Accepted 1 December 2014
Available online 9 December 2014
Keywords:
Life cycle assessment (LCA)
Industrialized building system (IBS)
Assembly phase
Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA)
Sensitivity analysis

a b s t r a c t
Rapid urbanization has greatly impacted housing demand and housing development in Iskandar Malaysia,
Johor. Iskandar Malaysia vision towards development of a low carbon society and in line with Malaysian
government policy promoting industrialized building system (IBS) to meet the increasing housing
demand. Hence, a comparative analysis of life cycle analysis (LCA) at assembly phase has been conducted to identify life cycle impact assessment and hotspot for material and construction stage between
IBS and conventional cast in situ for residential apartment buildings in Iskandar Malaysia. The purpose is
to apply IBS in residential building construction towards greener building and sustainable development.
The functional unit of the comparison analyses was one square metre of produced building area for the
respective construction period. A comparable inventory analysis will be carried out between two case
studies. An input-output owchart is created for each process to determine the components included in
the analysis. Flows of assembly phase will be modelled in Gabi 6.0 software to further interpret the life
cycle impact assessment (LCIA) between the two construction methods, and to determine the hotspot
between the processes. Finally, a sensitivity analysis will be conducted to determine the inuence of
variations in assumptions, methods and data on the results.
2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The rapid increase in population and economic growth in Iskandar Malaysia has led to the construction of high-rise buildings in
urban areas especially in Johor Bahru Metropolitan area. This study
aims to mitigate a reduction in the energy use and GHG emissions
in Iskandar Malaysia from the residential building sector. It examines the assembly phase of the life cycle, including material and
construction stages by using life cycle assessment (LCA).
The construction method of a building offers signicant impact
on energy use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and especially
global warming potential (GWP). The practice of construction in
Malaysia is still by conventional cast in situ, even though the
government of Malaysia has imposed contractors to design industrialized building system (IBS) with a Manual IBS Content Scoring
System (as the published by CIDB score of no less than 70% [1]
In Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) IBS Roadmap

Corresponding author. Tel.: +60 177470315; fax: +60 7 5581463.

E-mail address: zainurazn@utm.my (Z.Z. Noor).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2014.12.002
0378-7788/ 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

20112015, it is recommended that by year 2015 the public sector building projects to sustain the existing momentum of 70% IBS
content whereas the private sector building project to increase the
existing IBS content to 50% [2]. In addition, Iskandar Malaysia is
moving towards a low carbon society that emphases on mitigation
to reduce the GHG emission through building, industry, transport
and land use. Building carbon emission is projected to increase from
34 mil. tonnes CO2 to 58 mil. tonnes CO2 by year 2020 [3]. The application of IBS in low and high rise buildings had a signicant impact
on the life cycle of a building. For example, in production phase,
it reduces the need for transport of materials, consequently preventing unnecessary CO2 emissions; in construction phase, precast
concrete limits the amount of CO2 emissions resulting from heating
and cooling generation due to its very good thermal properties.
Since the case study is located at Iskandar Malaysia, a comparison case study of LCA between residential apartments constructed
with IBS and those using conventional cast in situ methods are to
be carried out in order to measure the environmental impact. This
is to ensure that stakeholders such as developers, contractors, government agencies and suppliers can realize the importance of IBS
towards a more sustainable building. Considerably reducing our

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T. Jia Wen et al. / Energy and Buildings 93 (2015) 295302

emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is a challenge for

everyone. The building sector, which accounts for a large portion
of emissions, must play an important role in achieving and going
beyond the 40% reduction in CO2 emissions set by our Prime Minister Y.A.B Dato Sri Mohd Najib bin Tun Abdul Razak, in COP15, 2009,
Copenhagen, Denmark, in which he proposed to reduce Carbon
Emission intensity in Malaysia by a minimum of 40% by year 2020
compared with its 2005 levels, subject to assistance from developed
countries. The construction sector can in many ways inuence the
quantity of emissions produced by a given building during its whole
lifetime.

2. Life cycle assessment (LCA)

LCA is a process whereby the material and energy ow of a system are quantied and evaluated. Typically, upstream (extraction,
production, transportation and construction) uses, and downstream (deconstruction and disposal) ows of a product or service
system are inventoried rst [4]. There are four phases in LCA
study: the goal and scope denition; the inventory analysis; the
impact assessment, and the interpretation. While conducting a
comparative study, the equivalence on the systems being compared shall be evaluated before interpreting the results based on
ISO 14044:2006(E) [5].
The standard life cycle of a building can be divided into three
phases, with each phase also consisting of a few life cycle stages
assembly phase, operation phase and disassembly phase [6]. The
assembly phase refers to the collection of raw materials through
resource extraction or recycling, the manufacture of these raw
materials into products, the assembly of products into a building,
the replacement of building products and assemblies, and intermediate transportation. Asdrubali [7] emphasized that the importance
of embodied energy is growing as a consequence of new regulations
introduced to reduce the building consumption during operation phase. The operation phase refers to heating and electricity
requirements, water services and other services, excluding material
replacement. The disassembly phase refers to the decommissioning and demolition of the building, the disposal/recycling/reuse
of building products and assemblies, and intermediate transportation steps. Each life cycle stage can consist of many unit processes.
However, in order to have a comparative analysis between two
case studies, the functional unit of each process must be the same
on an equivalent basisa so called apples-to apples comparison
[8].
Buildings consume energy directly or indirectly in all phases
of their life cycle right from the cradle to the grave, and there is
interplay between all phases of energy use (embodied and operating energy). An analysis of cases found in the literature showed
that life cycle energy use of buildings depends on the operating
(8090%) and embodied (1020%) energy of building [4]. Cement
Concrete & Aggregates Australia LCA [9] case studies indicate that
the energy used to produce the construction materials (embodied energy) is generally less than 10% of the operational energy
(including heating, cooling and lighting) used over a fty-year
life.
Hence, buildings need to be analyzed from a life cycle point of
view. In this paper, we focus on assembly phase that makes up
part of the embodied energy used by residential buildings, in Iskandar Malaysia. Chang [10] stated that construction energy includes
the diesel, gasoline and electricity used by construction machineries such as excavators, bull dozers, loaders and cranes. Chang also
mentioned that embodied energy is dominated by building material manufacturing (90%), and transportation and construction only
4% and 6% respectively. In addition, Nssn [11] also conducted
case studies that resulted in energy input of 91% for material

manufacturing, 3% for transportation and 6% for construction. The

results may differ because of climate, location and method of construction.

3. Industrialized building system (IBS)

IBS (known as offsite manufacture in the British construction
industry) is a construction technique in which components are
manufactured in mass production in a controlled environment (on
or off site), transported, positioned and assembled into a structure with minimal additional site work [12]. Using materials with
higher albedos, such as concrete, will reduce the heat island effect,
save energy by reducing the demand for air-conditioning, and
improve air quality [13]. VanGeem also stated that precast buildings used less concrete than in other concrete buildings because
of the optimization of materials which will result in smaller structural members, longer span. The lower quantity of materials used
indirectly translates into economic savings, as well as offering environmental savings.
Mao [14] dened that off-site prefabrication provides a broad
forward evolution compared with conventional construction
methods, especially to meet the requirement of environmental sustainability. Malaysia rst started the development of IBS in the early
1960s when Public Work Department (PWD) and Ministry of Housing and Local Government (MHLG) visited European countries to
evaluate the housing development programme [15]. Researchers
in Malaysia have identied the barriers that hinder developers and
contractors from using IBS in construction industry [1619], such
as low incentives from the government, high cost, low standardizations of components, poor readiness, awareness and knowledge.
Din [16] recommended that one way to move forward is to increase
sustainability awareness around the globe in an effort to improve
project efciency and deliverables to promote the sustainability
development and green construction. Azman [19] found out that
IBS precast manufacturing in the Iskandar Regional Development
Authority (IRDA) has increased dramatically due to rapid construction development and demand increase. Surveys from Oliewy,
Mustapha, and Mohammad [20] about the advantages of IBS in
Malaysia found that IBS can reduce the construction time of a
project, minimize the use of timber formwork at construction site,
and help to keep construction sites cleaner and neater. Overall it
will positively affect the productivity of work, as well as reducing
the solid waste onsite and decrease the transport costs out of the
site.

4. Goal and scope

The rst step of LCA in ISO 14044:2006 (E) is to determine the
goal and scope. The goal is to determine the environmental impact
and hotspot during assembly phase, including material and construction stage by comparing an IBS and cast in situ building in Johor
Bahru, Iskandar Malaysia. In order to complete the LCA, GaBi software is used to obtain the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) and
Interpretation by doing a sensitivity and completeness check. For
instance, the material input of precast concrete was extracted from
GaBi software database that covers the production of concrete of
C20/25 and reinforcing steel. The assessment includes the life cycle
from the energy generation and raw material supply to the nished
product on the factory gate. Transports gate to building site are
not part of the system database. In this case, the transportation from
the manufacturing to construction site is considered separately.
The scope of the study focuses on the assembly phase in the LCA
of IBS buildings in Iskandar Malaysia, and the result of the environmental impact by comparing with a conventional cast in situ

T. Jia Wen et al. / Energy and Buildings 93 (2015) 295302

297

Fig. 1. System boundary for assembly stage for building LCA.

building. We hypothesize that IBS building use less energy, and

have lower carbon emissions and environmental impact.

located at Johor Bahru, Iskandar Malaysia, is determine through

using 1 m2 of built-up area as the comparable functional unit for
both materials and the construction stage.

4.1. System boundaries

4.3. Case studies
It is important to identify the system boundaries of research
area. The overall LCA of a building, using the cradle to grave
approach, is from raw material to demolition. However, in this
paper, the focus is on the assembly phase that covers the raw
materials as well as the construction stage input and output. The
input and output owchart identies resources such as concrete,
wood, steel bar and tiles as materials and machineries. Water and
electricity consumption during construction are also identied as
shown in Fig. 2. Application of the GaBi Software database obtained
the environmental impacts, such as global warming potentials and
embodied energy, which were used to compare case studies with
different construction methods. The assembly phase also covers the
transportation of materials from manufacturers or distributors to
the construction site. However, construction waste was excluded
from the study due to lack of information. Fig. 1 shows the system
boundaries of the study.
4.2. Functional unit
Most of the building sizes were calculated by their built-up
area. Comparative analysis between an IBS and cast in situ building

Excavator

Trucks

Piling Machines

The case studies are located in Iskandar Malaysia, Johor, the

southern gateway to Peninsular Malaysia which has one of the
largest economic developments in Asia with a total of ve agship
zones proposed as key points for development, making each agship a major urban centre. According to a report called Low carbon
city 2025 Sustainable Iskandar Malaysia, the development of Iskandar Malaysia has induced an increase in population by 2.2 times
from 1,353,202 in 2005 to 3,005,815 in 2025. Energy consumption
will also increase to 1091 ktoe and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
to 7715 kt-CO2 , that is, respectively, 4.5 and 5.3 times higher than
in the year 2005 [3].
Consequently, a study of LCA, achieved by comparing two fourstorey buildings located at Iskandar Malaysia which requires one
building to be built using the industrialized building system (IBS)
and another to be built in cast in situ, is conducted to assess the
embodied energy and GWP towards the environment. The details
of both buildings are summarized in Table 1. Figs. 3 and 4 show
the pictures and plan layout of respective case studies for reference purposes. The sources of the case studies were obtained from
the respective project ofces (PRISMA and Nusa Villa) involving

Cranes

Precast
Concrete

Glass
Construcon
Machineries

Aluminium
Concrete

Diesel Combuson CO2

emission

Construcon Energy
inventory

Paint

Water

Construcon Carbon
Emission

Electricity

Skim Coat
Plaster

Mortar
Material
Input

Steel bars

Tiles

Wood

Bricks

Plasterboard

Material Carbon Emission

Fig. 2. Input and output owchart for assembly phase (material & construction).

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T. Jia Wen et al. / Energy and Buildings 93 (2015) 295302

Table 1
Details of case studies.
Project title

Location

Type of
construction

Built-up area
[m2 /unit]

Total built-up area

[m2 ]

Construction
period [months]

PRISMA IBS

Gelang Patah, Johor

Bahru

111.45

4458

27

Nusa Villa Cast In Situ

Skudai, Johor Bahru

Industrialized
building system
(IBS)
Cast in situ

110.69

4428

36a

Piagam Pelanggan dan Norma Pelaksanaan Projek Jabatan Kerja Raya Malaysia (JKR), 2012 [21].

Fig. 3. Picture and plan layout of PRISMAIBS.

interview with the Project Manager and Quantity Surveyor who

were in charge of the projects. The data was extracted from the Construction Architectural Drawing and bill of quantities which were
given by the Project Manager and Quantity Surveyor whereas any
information that was not given will be based on assumption and
literature reviews.

5. Life cycle owchart and inventory for comparable

analysis
After collecting the data and information an input-output
owchart was created to determine input of materials,
machineries, water and electricity consumption for both material
and construction stages as shown in Fig. 2.

5.1. Material
There are eleven (11) elements that were included in the
material input for PRISMA IBS: precast concrete, concrete, steel
bars, wood, plasterboard, glass, aluminium, mortar, paint and tiles
whereas for Nusa Villa Cast In Situ building precast concrete was
excluded and replaced by bricks. Not all of the construction materials were considered in the research due to the data limitations
and time constraints. Some cut off rules were used in LCA to reduce
unnecessary complicity and enable comparative calculation. Based
on the literature surrounding good practice of LCA building [22],
System of the German Sustainable Building Council has treated
some problems based on the cut-off rules to ensure that all building materials which have less than 1% of total weight (inputs) of
the building and whose impact on the life cycle (output) as well as

Fig. 4. Picture and plan layout of Nusa Villa Cast In Situ.

T. Jia Wen et al. / Energy and Buildings 93 (2015) 295302

Table 2
Summary of machineries and duration used.
Activity

Numbers

PRISMA IBS

Table 3
Weightage of material used.
Nusa Villa Cast In Situ

Materials

Duration [months]
Earthwork/substructure
Excavator
Truck
Piling machine with
diesel hammer
Superstructure
Crane

299

2
2
2

1
1
2

1
1
2

12

Source: Project Manager from Public Work Department (2014).

material also make up less than 1% of the entire energy demand,

GWP or other environmental impacts can be neglected.

Weight (kg)/m2 built-up area

PRISMA IBS

Nusa Villa Cast In Situ

Precast concrete
Concrete
Brickworks
Plaster board
Skim coat plaster
Reinforced steel
Wood/timber
Ceramic tiles
Glass
Aluminium
Mortar
Paint

1017
340

15.87
108.95
18.2
0.66
4.2
1
0.56
27.67
7

971.04
206.96
15.8
100.41
49.69
21.85
3.75
0.56
0.32
79.75
7.25

Total

1541.11

1457.38

5.3. Inventory of the material stage

5.2. Construction
During construction, the diesel used for handling the machineries used to transport the building materials to the construction site
was calculated with electricity and water consumption also being
taken into consideration. The construction stage includes transportation of construction materials such as precast concrete, tiles
and concrete to site, the energy that is used by this construction
equipment for installation is taken into account. Waste produced
during construction was excluded from the scope of studies due to
lack of required information.
The total construction period for PRISMA IBS is 27 months
whereas no record for the construction period has been recorded for
Nusa Villa Cast In Situ. As such, according to Piagam Pelanggan dan
Norma Pelaksanaan Projek Jabatan Kerja Raya Malaysia (JKR) [21]
(translated as Client Charter and Project Implementation Norms of
Public works Department Malaysia), the construction period for a
building with a cost of more than RM5 million is 36 months, which
was applied to Nusa Villa Cast In Situ.
The inventory of energy intensity and carbon data for both water
and electricity are seen as in Table 6. Secondary data was used
for the water and electricity consumption in both case studies.
The electric and water bills were collected to calculate the average usage of electricity and water per month in 1 m2 of built-up
area. The main difference seen is that IBS had a shorter construction
period compared to cast in situ building.
During earth excavation, extensive machinery was used to excavate the soil including excavators, trucks and piling machines with
a diesel hammer. With the help of an experienced project manager, the duration of the earth excavation one and half months up
until completion. During the interview with the Project Manager
of PRISMA IBS, the contractor allocated a fabrication site for precast concrete situated about 5 km from the actual construction site,
whereby the quarry was also located only 2 km away only from the
construction site.
The project manager and quantity surveyor were unable to give
information about the machinery used during construction. Hence
an interview with an expert Project Manager from Public Work
Department had been conducted. The energy that was contributed
due to the earthwork activity was made up from an excavator, a
truck and piling machines which were used for earth excavation
and piling. The duration of the earthwork was about 3 months for
both case studies. It is assumed that the duration of crane use during
construction was 8 months for IBS and one 1 year for cast in situ.
Cranes were used to mobilize the panels and materials during the
superstructure activities during constructions. As summary of the
machineries used is shown in Table 2.

There are various items that were included in the bill of quantities (BQ) to be extracted into a few main items. In this case, a
major item that been selected to be included in the study is seen
in Table 3. The data is then inserted in GaBi software for life cycle
impact assessment analysis.
5.4. Inventories of the construction stage
The inventories for energy intensity and emission factors for
transporting precast panel and concrete from plant to site on both
outbound and return journeys is shown in Table 4.
5.4.1. Embodied energy and GWP for construction stage
Table 4 shows the items that contributed to the energy and carbon emission of the machinery used during the construction period,
mentioned earlier in Table 2. Since IBS building used less time
to construct a building, the machinery signicantly impacted the
overall energy and carbon emissions. The cranes used for material
mobility consumed the most energy and carbon. Shorter construction periods for IBS building benet from lower energy (MJ) and
carbon emissions (kg CO2 -equiv.) especially in terms of the usage
of cranes where IBS shows lower energy and carbon emissions
compared with cast in situ building. Other than that, the energy
and carbon emissions for transportation of material to the site for
IBS also shows a signicant reduction due to shorter transportation distances, resulting in lower diesel consumption. Mao [14]
emphasized that a way to reduce GHG emissions produced through
transportation of prefabricated components is to allocate a fabrication factory which is situated close to the construction site. Another
way to do this is by minimizing the transportation distance.
6. Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA)
Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is a way to evaluate the
performance and environmental impact of a project based on a
functional unit. Ricardo Mateus, Luis Braganza stated that there
are wide ranges of impact category indicators, normally categorized according to the endpoint or the midpoint. Throughout this
research, there is a focus on the assessment of embodied energy and
GWP of building construction using the life cycle analysis approach
with GaBi software.
6.1.1. Embodied energy for material and construction stage
Table 6 shows that cast in situ residential buildings have greater
embodied energy than IBS buildings with a difference of 31.68% for

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T. Jia Wen et al. / Energy and Buildings 93 (2015) 295302

Table 4
Comparative results of energy and carbon emission for construction stage.
ITEM

Embodied energy [MJ]

Carbon emission [kg CO2 -Equiv.]

IBS

Cast in situ

IBS

Cast in situ

Excavator
Truck
Piling machine with diesel hammer
Transporting material to site

129.9875
0.0052
246.7962
22.9497

137.0661
0.08062
248.4683
44.6408

9.6190
0.0004
18.2629
1.6047

10.1429
0.00597
18.3867
1.9557

Mobile cranes

277.9932

419.8150

20.5715

31.0663

Table 5
Results of global warming potential (GWP 100 years) [kg CO2 -Equiv.] when 20%
standard deviation applied on respective parameters of each case studies.

material stage and 23.47% for construction stage. Fig. 5 show the
embodied energy for IBS buildings between material and construction stage has the total value of 84.1% and 15.9%. Whereas, cast
in situ buildings produced 85.6% and 14.4% of embodied energy for
material and construction stage. The results obtained are relatively
low when compared with the results from researchers Chang [10]
and Nssn [9] as their result was about 90% for material and 10%
for construction. This is due to high energy used for machineries
during construction, especially mobile cranes and piling machines
which gains its high energy contribution from diesel. However, it
is clearly indicated that IBS buildings have lower embodied energy
than cast in situ buildings. According to Mao [14] and Pon [23],
which have conducted comparative case studies between semiprefabricated and conventional building, show that emissions of
semi-prefabricated buildings were approximately 25% lower than
on site fabricated buildings. However, the small reduction of emissions might be attributed to lower levels of prefabrication and in
this case study the prefabrication is about 90% of the construction. Pons study indicated that higher degree of prefabrication
could have better benets towards environmental impacts, especially greenhouse gas emission. The construction machineries used
were based on observation and assumption of normal practice in
Malaysia. If the number of cranes used was reduced, a signicant
reduction would have been noted in energy consumption and emissions during construction; therefore it may t the theory of Mao and
Pon.
6.1.2. GWP for material and construction stage
The main impact categories at the midpoint of this study was
analyzed using CML 20022010 analyzed in GaBi Software is global
warming potential (GWP 100 years) [kg CO2 -Equiv.]. Analysis
results from Table 5 show that GWP has the highest environmental
impact with the difference of 11.7% and 20.42% for material and
construction stage when compared to cast in situ and IBS buildings. The differences are signicant for the construction stage, thus
IBS consumed lesser construction period than cast in situ buildings
which directly affect the total impact of GWP to the environment.
The comparison results between material and construction stage of

CML 20022010, global warming potential

(GWP 100 years) [kg CO2 -Equiv.]
IBS [%]

Cast In Situ [%]

Precast concrete
Concrete
Steel
Bricks
Paint

11.70
3.01
2.11

1.61

7.85
5.08
3.48
1.47

Global Warming Potential

(GWP 100 years) [kg CO2Equiv.]

Fig. 5. Comparison of embodied energy for IBS and cast in situ building during the
assembly phase.

Parameter

300
250
200
150
100
50
0

IBS

Material
244.5434

Construction
52.9883

Cast In-Situ

276.9333

66.5866

Fig. 6. Comparison of GWP for IBS and cast in situ building during the assembly
phase.

cast in situ and IBS buildings also shown in Fig. 6 which cast in situ
building has higher GWP (Table 6).
6.1.3. Hotspot for material stage
Since the GWP and embodied energy have high environmental
impacts on the material stage, the hotspots of elements of materials are further determined and the results are indicated in Table 7.
Based on the analysis, precast concrete in IBS building material has
the highest embodied energy and GWP with 30.11% and 57.62%
respectively. This is because precast concrete contains a high volume of concrete and reinforced steel for building frames, wall and
slab panels. Similarly Omar [24] explained that the concrete materials embodied carbon in the IBS system is higher because the wall
system has a heavier load bearing on the wall structures. Based on
the research ndings, paint surprisingly has high embodied energy
in IBS buildings when compared with concrete and reinforced bar
due to the weightage of concrete and the reinforced bar used for
construction is low which its encounter for substructure construction only. If elements in precast concrete are divided into concrete
and reinforced steel, the weightage and percentage will be different. On the other hand, embodied energy for reinforced steel in
cast in situ buildings has the greatest value that is 36.32% follow
by concrete 21.81%. Reinforced steel has high embodied energy
(MJ/kg) when compared with concrete. However, concrete at the
GWP in cast in situ buildings were at its highest value that is 40.23%

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301

Table 6
Assessment of embodied energy and GWP on material & construction impact categories.
Material

Life cycle impact

assessment (LCIA)

IBS
Global warming
potential (GWP 100
years) [kg
CO2 -Equiv.]
Embodied energy [MJ]

Construction

Cast in situ

Difference [%]

244.5434

276.9333

11.70

4061.3932

5944.4527

31.68

IBS

Cast in situ

52.9883

66.5866

767.597

1002.939

Difference [%]
20.42

23.47

Table 7
Comparison of material stage for embodies energy (MJ) & global warming potential (GWP 100 years) [kg CO2 -Equiv.] result from GaBi Software.
Embodied energy [MJ]

Precast concrete
Concrete
Brickworks
Plaster board
Skim coat plaster
Reinforced steel
Wood/timber
Ceramic tiles
Glass
Aluminium
Mortar
Paint
Total
Difference (%)

GWP [kg CO2 -Equiv.]

IBS

Cast in situ

IBS

1222.93
438.25

187.98
166.54
791.19
9.43
122.19
20.64
140.48
87.71
874.06
4061.39

30.11
10.79

4.63
4.10
19.48
0.23
3.01
0.51
3.46
2.16
21.52
100.000

1296.22
773.94
186.80
152.79
2159.27
16.55
109.10
11.56
80.28
252.69
905.27
5944.45

21.81
13.02
3.14
2.57
36.32
0.28
1.84
0.19
1.35
4.25
15.23
100.000

140.917
37.663

5.574
1.182
26.222
0.251
3.284
1.095
4.782
5.409
18.164
244.543

57.62
15.40

2.28
0.48
10.72
0.10
1.34
0.45
1.96
2.21
7.43
100.000

31.68

Cast In Situ

111.398
45.361
5.539
1.085
71.563
1.315
2.932
0.613
2.733
15.582
18.813
276.933
11.70

40.23
16.38
2.00
0.39
25.84
0.47
1.06
0.22
0.99
5.63
6.79
100.000

Bold values signify high % on relative materials.

Global Warming Potential (GWP 100

years) [kg CO2-Equiv.]

Embodied Energy (MJ)

2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0

IBS

Cast In-Situ

160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0

IBS

Cast In-Situ

Fig. 7. Comparison of embodied energy for material phase.

Fig. 8. Comparison of GWP for material phase.

follow by 25.84% for reinforced steel. Mao [14] stated that the key
approaches to reduce GHG emissions in semi-prefabrication are to
reduce the steel usage by design optimization of reinforced join
links of components. Figs. 7 and 8 show the comparison between
IBS and cast in situ buildings of embodied energy and GWP in a
form of a chart.

on IBS has a signicant effect towards GWP when 20% standard

deviation with the effects of 11.50% whereas cast in situ concrete
has the value of 7.82% when 20% standard deviation was used.
As a result, the weightage (kg) of precast concrete such as the panels
of slabs, columns and beams have a signicant impact towards the
GWP. Table 5 shows the details of global warming potential (GWP
100 years) [kg CO2 -Equiv.] when 20% standard deviation applied
on respective parameters of each case studies.

6.2. Sensitivity analysis

Sensitivity analysis had been conducted to determine the inuence of variations in assumptions, methods and data of the results
with a range of 20% for materials. The sensitivity analysis was carried out using GaBi Analyst on the parameters of pre-cast concrete,
concrete, reinforced steel, bricks and paint for both case studies
for GWP in CML method. The results show that precast concrete

7. Conclusion
The comparison of the assembly phase between IBS and cast
in situ of low rise apartment residential buildings in Iskandar
Malaysia Johor Bahru for 1 m2 of built-up oor area, clearly indicates that IBS has a better advantage in terms of reducing embodied

302

T. Jia Wen et al. / Energy and Buildings 93 (2015) 295302

energy (MJ) and GWP (kg CO2 -Equiv.) towards a low carbon development. The identied hotspots for materials also give better
understanding on contribution of energy and carbon emissions
especially precast concrete, reinforced steel and concrete. In this
case, concrete and steel is the major contributors to the embodied
energy and emissions to the environment. It is recommended that
the consideration and improvement during the design phase and
use of environmental friendly material such y ash, which according to the American Concrete Institute (ACI) in their analysis of
CO2 emissions for concrete, substituting y ash for 25% of Portland
cement in a typical concrete mix can reduce overall CO2 emissions
by thirteen to fteen percent [25]. However, a detailed study needs
to be carried out on the performance of y ash in Malaysias climate
and environment.
More case studies need to be conducted in Malaysia in order to
obtain more concrete results of embodied energy and environmental impacts such as impacts on high rise buildings. It is important
for construction industries in Malaysia to realize the importance
of IBS towards sustainable development and green buildings. The
most important initiative shall be taken by the local authorities
and government is by educating and encouraging the stakeholders to apply IBS in their development. In addition, IBS building
not only can reduce the environmental impact, it also affects the
performance of building during operation and demolition phase.
Moreover, life cycle cost analysis may also be carried out in aspect
on given the developers on importance of constructing IBS buildings rather than cast in situ building since the biggest concern of
developers is construction cost.
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