Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the waste occurrence level in the construction industry. It includes: first, identifying the mean value of frequency of waste occurrence according to respondents' characteristics; second, identifying the main predictive factors for waste occurrence based on latent relationships between initial waste factors; and third, identifying the waste occurrence-level indicator (WOLI) for the construction industry based on the main waste measurement factors. Design/methodology/approach - A total of 19 waste factors were sorted from the literature review. A structured questionnaire was adopted to carry out the survey. The respondents are professionals who have much experience in construction and management of project. Shapiro-Wilk test of normality, Levene's test, ANOVA test, and factor analysis technique were used to analyze the collected data. Findings - Frequency of waste occurrence in construction projects is quite high. There was no statistically and practically significant difference in means for waste occurrence between selected population categories. Based on factor analysis technique, there were five principal components extracted with 56.7 percent of total variance. The WOLI in the construction industry was found as 61.55 per the scale of 100. Research limitations/implications - The non-probability sampling was applied to collect data because of several certain limitations and difficulties. The number of data sets is relatively small. This study has only examined the frequency of waste occurrence without quantitative information. Practical implications - This is another study of waste factors in the construction industry, which is different from traditional waste studies. Originality/value - The contribution of this study to the practical project management is that a proposed evaluation sheet for WOLI could be applied for any construction firm.