From a conventional to a sustainable engineering design process: different shades of sustainability

Abstract

The challenge of realigning the present path of development on a sustainable trajectory concerns all sectors of society, including engineering. To move towards a sustainable practice of engineering, the design process needs to be modified in order for engineers to efficiently tackle the related issues. Such ‘sustainable design processes’ (SDPs) are proposed in the literature. By reviewing the conventional design process and SDP, this paper aims to identify the differences between both approaches. The potential contribution of recent design theories, methods and techniques to sustainable engineering is also briefly discussed. Tasks from existing SDPs are combined with crucial complements into a novel integrated sustainable engineering design process. Instead of representing conventional and sustainable engineering as a dichotomy, this paper places both paradigms on a continuum along which the engineer can position himself and assess his progress. The proposed procedure reveals shades of sustainability along six dimensions: (1) the structure of the design process, (2) the scope of sustainability issues covered, (3) the relevance of the indicators considered, (4) the accuracy of the tools used for evaluation, (5) the potential improvements expected from the alternatives assessed and (6) decision-making.

Keywords:

• sustainable design
• prescriptive models of the design process
• sustainability

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies (FQRNT) and the Fonds québécois de recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC) for their financial support.