The sustainability of built structures has been one of the main concerns in the last decade. In order to evaluate the sustainability of precast concrete manholes, a life cycle assessment scheme for precast concrete manholes is discussed in this paper. The sustainability efforts associated with precast concrete manholes is also briefly explained in this paper. Accounting for the soil structure interaction effect, in the design of different types of precast concrete manholes is proposed as an approach that may lead to a more sustainable design. This proposal is based on an extensive experimental and numerical investigation on precast concrete manholes that was conducted at Western University, Canada, in collaboration with the Ontario Concrete Pipe Association. The results of this investigation show that the manhole base design procedure can be altered to reduce the required reinforcement in the manhole base, which in turn would lead to a more sustainable manhole production.
