A multi-dimensional circular economy maturity assessment framework for construction organisations

Recent advances in construction research have produced multiple circularity assessment frameworks that focus from material to whole-scale projects, covering various life cycle stages. These frameworks have been valuable for quantifying project-level outcomes, offering a short-term perspective, while overlooking the long-term circular economy (CE) transition. Recent studies therefore advocate shifting assessment to the construction organisational level, targeting the process improvement to generate consistent CE outcomes across projects. The maturity assessment framework is a promising approach, as it captures and guides organisational processes from initial to a desired state, thereby supporting long-term CE transition. Hence, this study aims to develop a multi-dimensional CE maturity assessment framework for construction organisations. To achieve the aim, three objectives were formulated: i) define the relevant Key Process Areas (KPAs), ii) determine the level of importance and categorise the KPAs, and iii) define the suitable assessment attributes to assess/operationalise the KPAs. Initially, the conceptual KPAs and assessment attributes were formulated based on previous studies on CE indicators for construction organisations. Subsequently, two Delphi-based expert forums were conducted. Forum 1 focused on verifying the suitability of conceptual KPAs and assessing their importance, while Forum 2 focused on verifying the suitability of assessment attributes. The results yielded 19 KPAs and 62 assessment attributes. Critical KPAs include material circularity improvement, circularity in building design and construction, waste circularity improvement, and greenhouse gas emissions reduction. Theoretically, this study addresses the organisational-level circularity assessment gap; in practice, it guides construction professionals toward circularity adoption by focusing on appropriate KPAs and assessment attributes.