Integrating Circular Economy Principles into Systems Engineering Processes for the Construction Industry

The construction industry faces significant challenges in resource depletion and waste generation, necessitating a shift towards circular and sustainable practices. This study, conducted in collaboration with ProcessMinded, a consultancy firm specializing in Systems Engineering (SE) in construction projects, addresses these challenges by investigating the integration of circular economy principles into the SE process. Focusing on four key circularity principles: closing, narrowing, slowing, and regenerating the resource loops. The research develops a framework to guide the implementation of these principles across each step of the SE process: Project start, requirements analysis, functional analysis and allocation, design synthesis, and verification and validation. The methodology comprised a narrative literature review synthesizing diverse sources for the integration. This literature review informed the development of a structured framework organizing circularity integration for each SE step into inputs, actions, and outputs. The framework also includes practical examples for some actions to illustrate real-world applications. To validate the framework, semi-structured interviews were conducted with five experienced systems engineers from ProcessMinded.