Innovative LCA solutions for the renovation of school buildings through lean construction methodologies (Marco Ricci - ABCPhD)

The research wants to explore innovative LCA solutions for the renovation of educational facilities through agile project management and BIM integration.
The Scopus database has been used in this preliminary phase as a basis for a relevant literature review, starting by considering the results concerning the built environment and its renovation through the following query:
#01 TITLE-ABS-KEY ( building  AND  ( renovation  OR  retrofit ) )
The search met 7.134 results that have been refined by subject area, limiting the results to the following ones:
#02 TITLE-ABS-KEY ( construction  AND  ( renovation  OR  retrofit ) )  AND  ( LIMIT-TO ( SUBJAREA ,  "ENGI" )  OR  LIMIT-TO ( SUBJAREA ,  "ENVI" )  OR  LIMIT-TO ( SUBJAREA ,  "ENER" )  OR  LIMIT-TO ( SUBJAREA ,  "COMP" )  OR  LIMIT-TO ( SUBJAREA ,  "DECI" ) )
This query found 5.577 results and needs further refinement to perform bibliometric analyses.
It is then considered the relevance of BIM (Building Information Modelling) for this specific research, and included in the query as following:
#03 ( TITLE-ABS-KEY ( construction  AND  ( renovation  OR  retrofit ) ) )  AND  ( bim  OR  "building information model*" )  AND  ( LIMIT-TO ( SUBJAREA ,  "ENGI" )  OR  LIMIT-TO ( SUBJAREA ,  "ENVI" )  OR  LIMIT-TO ( SUBJAREA ,  "ENER" )  OR  LIMIT-TO ( SUBJAREA ,  "COMP" )  OR  LIMIT-TO ( SUBJAREA ,  "DECI" ) )
This search string returned 220 results, though it included unwanted results such as waste management and bridge engineering.
To overcome this issue, another database has been selected, Web of Science, which offers more refined categories, and the same previous query has been re-inserted:
#04 TOPIC: (building AND (renovation OR retrofit*)) Timespan: All years. Indexes: SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI, CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH, BKCI-S, BKCI-SSH, ESCI, CCR-EXPANDED, IC.
10.352 results were returned, and additional refining was performed by limiting the categories to:
·        Construction building technologies
·        Green sustainable science technology
·        Environmental science
·        Engineering environmental
·        Urban studies
·        Environmental studies
·        Architecture
And by including the words “life cycle” in the query to get closer to the main research focus:
#05 TOPIC: (building AND (renovation OR retrofit*)) Refined by: WEB OF SCIENCE CATEGORIES: ( CONSTRUCTION BUILDING TECHNOLOGY OR GREEN SUSTAINABLE SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY OR ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES OR ENGINEERING ENVIRONMENTAL OR ARCHITECTURE OR ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES OR URBAN STUDIES ) AND TOPIC: (life cycle) Timespan: All years. Indexes: SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI, CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH, BKCI-S, BKCI-SSH, ESCI, CCR-EXPANDED, IC.
This search defined 482 documents that could be later analysed with deeper bibliometric analysis tools and could represent a good starting point for the research: in fact, if we sort the results according to the number of citations, there are some literature reviews about BIM with retrofit and life-cycle assessment with relevant importance.
Besides the previous analysis, that contributes as a starting point, the research innovation should gravitate around the combination of the latter queries with lean construction. This is translated into the following search strings that have been used as inputs for Web of Science:
#06 TOPIC: (lean AND construction) Indexes=SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI, CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH, BKCI-S, BKCI-SSH, ESCI, CCR-EXPANDED, IC Timespan=All years
The query returned 1.320 documents, that have been refined according to the already mentioned categories, where available:
·        Construction building technologies
·        Green sustainable science technology
·        Environmental science
·        Engineering environmental
#07 TOPIC: (lean AND construction) Refined by: WEB OF SCIENCE CATEGORIES: ( CONSTRUCTION BUILDING TECHNOLOGY OR ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES OR GREEN SUSTAINABLE SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY OR ENGINEERING ENVIRONMENTAL OR ARCHITECTURE ) Indexes=SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI, CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH, BKCI-S, BKCI-SSH, ESCI, CCR-EXPANDED, IC Timespan=All years
365 documents have been found, 46 total results when “BIM” is included into the query.
#08 TOPIC: (lean AND construction) Refined by: WEB OF SCIENCE CATEGORIES: ( CONSTRUCTION BUILDING TECHNOLOGY OR ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES OR GREEN SUSTAINABLE SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY OR ENGINEERING ENVIRONMENTAL OR ARCHITECTURE ) AND TOPIC: (bim) Indexes=SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI, CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH, BKCI-S, BKCI-SSH, ESCI, CCR-EXPANDED, IC Timespan=All years
In order to avoid missing information, the search of documents related to lean construction has been performed another time by changing the word “construction” into “building”, as following:
#09 TOPIC: (lean AND building) Indexes=SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI, CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH, BKCI-S, BKCI-SSH, ESCI, CCR-EXPANDED, IC Timespan=All years
2.122 results have been refined by focusing on the following categories:
·        Construction building technologies
·        Environmental science
·        Architecture
#10 TOPIC: (lean AND building) Refined by: WEB OF SCIENCE CATEGORIES: ( CONSTRUCTION BUILDING TECHNOLOGY OR ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES OR ARCHITECTURE ) Timespan: All years. Indexes: SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI, CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH, BKCI-S, BKCI-SSH, ESCI, CCR-EXPANDED, IC.
This refinement led to 253 results, which reduce to 45 documents when “BIM” is included in the query.
#11 TOPIC: (lean AND building) Refined by: WEB OF SCIENCE CATEGORIES: ( CONSTRUCTION BUILDING TECHNOLOGY OR ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES OR ARCHITECTURE ) AND TOPIC: (bim) Timespan: All years. Indexes: SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI, CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH, BKCI-S, BKCI-SSH, ESCI, CCR-EXPANDED, IC.