Sustainable refurbishment for school buildings: a literature review

Purpose Any building refurbishment is challenging and school buildings offer no exception. They are increasingly in need of refurbishment due to their age and evolving teaching and learning. The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of literature on sustainable refurbishment so as to identify key lessons from selected successful refurbishment projects. The review findings are expected to contribute to the development of refurbishment plans in an effective and innovative manner that should extend building's service life, focus on resource efficiency, and comfort their users. It will also contribute to knowledge base of refurbishment and suggest future directions for research. Design/methodology/approach The paper has undertaken a literature review on the sustainability assessment of buildings and frameworks for sustainable refurbishment. Besides, the work also provides a review of recent successful refurbishment projects to collect and structure systems experiences which can be adopted in developing a sustainable refurbishment strategy for school buildings. Findings Findings include three groups of lessons in terms of reasons, process and barriers in the selected refurbishment projects that assist stakeholders to prepare a suitable refurbishment plan for their school buildings. The potential of 3D scanners and BIM applications in the refurbishment process will also be reviewed in order to develop a proposed framework of 3D scanner vs BIM for the refurbishment process. Recommendations highlight the role of a national strategy as a driving factor for applying the advantages of information technology to enhance optimal solution selection processes to get better and more sustainable results. Originality/value The conceptual framework for 3D scanner and BIM applications within sustainable refurbishment for school buildings is currently under researched, and the findings aimed to address such a gap when considering 3D scanners and BIM applications in the refurbishment process.