Quantification of the contribution of demountable construction to the sustainable level of buildings. Case study: Green Box

This study quantifies for the first time the contribution of demountable construction to the sustainable level of a building using 11 of the most representative and internationally used GBRS (Green Building Rating Systems).The scores of a prefabricated building (Green Box) were compared with those of conventional design, in both cases using 11 of the most important GBRS. All GBRS have found that demountable construction provides a higher level of sustainability. However, the resulting scores varied widely (from an increase of 1.41% to an increase of 18.38%), and only three GBRS clearly identified the obvious advantages of demountable construction, while the rest value it very little, and four of them barely value it, despite its important environmental advantages.The results of this study have a high level of generalization since the analyzed building is built based on a wide variety of materials in its demountable components (prefabricated reinforced concrete panels, metal profiles and wood-based panels, etc.), in addition the different GBRS have few indicators in charge of evaluating the demountability of buildings, so the variations existing between different demountable systems would not change the final score, or would do so very slightly.However similar studies should be carried out to confirm the results obtained and accurately quantify the contribution of demountable construction to the sustainable level of buildings.