Discussion of "Waste-Based Management in Residential Construction" by Jing Zhang, Danelle L. Eastham, and Leonhard E. Bernold

The discussed paper asserted that an aggregated-process model (APM) and 10 critical success factors (SFs) are essential to minimize resource waste in construction. However, the paper does not provide a comprehensive description with respect to the various construction resources consumed on site and does not review all the possible reasons why resource wastage occurs on site. Importantly, no reference is made to waste on site that arises due to careless designs (Austin et al. 2002; Chen 2004). The paper does not cover how to minimize potential construction waste at the design stage, i.e., how to optimize designs to reduce potential construction waste. In fact, even if all of the 10 SFs, as mentioned in the discussed paper, are under effective control, the wastage of materials cannot be easily avoided if wastage due to design and other factors, which directly leads to construction waste, are not reviewed.