I’m a PhD candidate supervised by Prof. Sarah McLaren and Dr. Mikael Boulic and my work largely falls under the Sustainable Future and Mātauranga Māori research themes of the wider Construction 4.0 project. 

My thesis is Integrating Sustainability into Construction 4.0 using Mātauranga Māori-led Approaches. The Sustainability part of my work is centred on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) an environmental assessment tool that quantifies the environmental performance of a product system within a defined boundary. LCA can be used to identify ‘environmental hotspots’ (areas of greatest potential impact) within the system which can be addressed to reduce the environmental impact. 

LCA is largely viewed as an objective assessment methodology, despite the inherent subjectivity in many places (e.g. allocation method, system boundary, functional unit, impact assessment method, and weighting method – to name a few). My work seeks to harness the inherent subjectivity of LCA through developing a series of mātauranga Māori-led approaches to be used in a culturally-focused LCA+. This would seriously challenge the perceived ‘objectivity’ of LCA, in addition to addressing the significant gap in research of culture in LCA within a construction context. These mātauranga Māori-led approaches may also facilitate improved project outcomes where Māori are involved, in addition to potentially enhancing collaboration between Māori and others. 

Naturally, these culturally-focused approaches within an LCA methodology blend the Sustainable Future and Mātauranga Māori research themes. To me, this opportunity is the chance to work in an area of personal interest, but in an area that could cause meaningful change.