Parametric Pre-Demolition Audits and Material Passports as Decision-Support Tools for Construction and Demolition Waste Circularity: A Case-Study Framework

Introduction. Construction and demolition waste (CDW) constitutes the largest solid-waste stream globally, yet recovery decisions remain dominated by end-of-pipe sorting rather than upstream intelligence. Pre-demolition audits (PDAs) and material passports (MPs) are widely advocated as enablers of circularity, but empirical evidence linking parametric building models to quantified reuse outcomes is scarce, and standardised quantification methods are absent.

Methods. A reproducible case-study framework is applied to a building scheduled for demolition or refurbishment. A parametric model is constructed from drawings and on-site verification, yielding a material inventory disaggregated by mass and EN 15978 categories. Reuse, recycling, and landfill fractions are estimated, and embodied-carbon deltas against business-as-usual demolition are computed using the ICE database. The EU (2018) waste-audit guidelines structure the audit protocol; a prototype material-passport schema is generated as the terminal output.

Results. Anticipated outcomes (study in design phase) include a closed-loop demonstration from parametric inventory to reuse-rate quantification, with disaggregated recovery potential by material class and a quantified embodied-carbon saving attributable to audit-informed diversion. The framework is expected to expose discrepancies between drawing-based and site-verified inventories, isolating the principal sources of estimation error.

Conclusions. The framework operationalises PDAs and MPs as decision-support instruments rather than compliance artefacts, addressing the documented gap in standardised, digitally integrated CDW quantification. Its transferability positions it as a template for building-scale circularity assessment, with implications for embodied-carbon governance and design-for-deconstruction practice. Limitations include single-case generalisability and dependence on inventory-data quality.