A Multi-Criteria Approach For Energetic Expense Cut Back Through Climate-Friendly Material Selection For Office Building Development: A Conceptual Framework

Drawing on the concept of sustainability in environmental development, this paper presents a conceptual framework for aiding a multi-criteria material selection decision model for office building development in Ghana. The framework explores and evaluates the significance of analytical hierarchy process mode of decision-making to facilitate cut in energetic expense in building materials selection decision-making, in bringing cultural issues to the attention of civil and electrical engineers in office building development. With results derived from questionnaire surveys with a cross-section of house building stakeholders, key sustainability principle indicators impacting the selection of building materials are identified, analyzed, grouped and ranked according to the relative importance that each decision factor holds, using analytical hierarchy process theory of measurement through pairwise comparisons and relies on judgement of expert to derive priority scales. Adopting positivism the variables have been operationalized to reflect repetitive design intuition in the housing construction industry of Ghana: