Evaluation of sustainability indicators of industrial buildings focused on petrochemical projects

• Environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainable industrial buildings are evaluated.
• The most important indicators of sustainability through petrochemical projects life-cycle are identified and evaluated.
• The economic dimension of sustainability is the most important dimension in construction phase.
• The environmental dimension of sustainability is of great importance to operation and maintenance phase.
• The environmental and economic dimensions of sustainability have strong relationship in operation and maintenance phase.

It is widely accepted that the construction sector is one of the main contributors to sustainable development, and its importance in encouraging environmental protection, economic growth, and social advancement is undeniable. Many divisions of construction industry are accustomed to sustainable development concept especially environmental issues but hardly economic and social aspects. Among these divisions, the industrial buildings have gained less attention, while many developing and even developed countries require growth in industrial areas. This may highlight the need for studying sustainability in industrial buildings to accomplish sustainable development goals. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate and identify sustainability indicators (environmental, social, and economic) for three phases of construction, operation and maintenance, and demolition of petrochemical projects. Additionally, the collected data from a questionnaire survey are analyzed by evaluating the mean values and adopting the structure equation modeling approach. Then the importance of individual indicators and their correlation with main aspects of sustainability are examined. Moreover, this study examines the relationship among three dimensions of sustainable development concept and their influence on each other and the related phases. Furthermore, the most important indicators in this study are compared with some previous research.