Critical success factors for small contractors to conduct green building construction projects in Singapore: identification and comparison with large contractors

How to promote the diffusion of green behavior among contractors? Analysis and simulation using the SIR model

To promote the green development of the construction industry, improve resource utilization, and mitigate the environmental pollution caused by engineering projects, this study identifies the key paths and influencing factors of behavioral diffusion through the analysis of green behavior diffusion among contractors based on the behavioral decisions of the main participants. The study aims to improve positive influences among contractors with respect to the sustainable development of construction. Using the SIR (susceptible-infected-removed) model, we reconsider contractors of different states; construct state transformation paths for potential adopters, adopters, and abandoners of green behaviors among contractors; and analyze the factors that influence the diffusion of green behaviors among contractors to simulate the effects of different paths of behavior diffusion. The results show that two paths, adoption and recovery rates, have a positive influence on the diffusion of green behavior, while three other paths have a negative influence. The identified factors exhibit two types of influence, promotion and hindrance, involving both intra-firm and government regulations, and are associated with other stakeholders. This study promotes the diffusion of green behavior among contractors, which allows contractors to gain a competitive advantage in advance and has positive implications for the implementation of environmentally friendly concepts in the construction industry.

ICT and Environmental Sustainability: A Comparative Study

This study investigates the role of information and communication technology (ICT), political instability and violence, and international protocols on global carbon emissions. Our empirical analysis used archival data for 146 economies from 1996 to 2019. The study’s estimates are also based on subsamples from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries. The study found that ICT has statistically significant impacts on reducing CO2 emissions globally, but the extension of the impact for OECD member countries is considerably more substantial. Therefore, the subject of study is considered to be among the first few studies to measure the effects of violence and regional conflicts on global warming—a notable result for conflict regions around the world. Additionally, the authors narrowed down the findings to a micro level and conducted a comparative study between Canada and the United Kingdom to evaluate the countries’ performances concerning climate mitigation initiatives.

Status of Value Management Implementation in Small and Medium Construction Projects in Malaysia

Value management (VM) should be implemented in construction projects to achieve the best value-for-money for clients, irrespective of project size. However, its regular implementation in Malaysia appears mostly in large projects driven by legislation. Negligence was therefore aroused towards implementing VM for smaller projects and the specific status remains ambiguous to date. This paper aims to investigate the current status of VM implementation in small and medium construction projects in Malaysia with a view to exploring the challenges and measures in improving the status. A total of 162 construction organizations directly involved in small and medium projects were surveyed using a structured questionnaire. The findings revealed that the execution of VM by organizations for smaller construction projects is relatively low and significantly subject to project size regardless of project type. Practitioners’ levels of frequency and awareness towards implementing VM in small and medium construction projects remain low and unsatisfactory. Also, VM implementation in smaller projects was found significantly correlated with the experience of organizations and practitioners. Challenges and measures in ameliorating the observed status were explored. The findings contribute to a clear understanding of VM in small and medium construction projects in Malaysia and call for more attention from both academia and industry on VM for smaller sizes of projects.

Green construction practices: ensuring client satisfaction through health and safety performance

Studies have proven that client satisfaction (CS) is greatly affected by the nature of construction practices on site. However, not much attention has been given to CS in projects that adopt green construction practices (GCPs). This study examines the effect of GCPs on CS, and the means by which CS can be achieved through health and safety performance (HSP). This study also analyses how the relationship between HSP and CS could vary depending on the level of GCPs adopted. A questionnaire with 27 items drawn from literature was used in collecting data from class A contractors in Nigeria. The study's hypotheses were tested using the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique. The findings of the study reveal that GCPs have a positive effect on CS. HSP proved to only partially mediate the relationship between GCPs and CS. The findings also show that the effect of HSP on CS is moderated by GCPs with the stronger effect from projects with low adoption of GCPs. The study's findings highlight the pivotal role of HSP in ensuring CS in construction projects that adopt GCPs. This study makes practical contributions to the body of existing knowledge by highlighting the need for concerted efforts by contractors such as investing in health and safety training and ensuring site workers wear personal protective equipment aimed at adhering to acceptable health and safety standards. This can be achieved through provision of funds for safety activities, monitoring, and supervision of workers to guarantee HSP which translates to CS while adopting GCPs. However, the obstacles to these are the lack of safety culture by construction organizations, lack of enlightenment on the part of construction site workers, and poor safety climate on the construction project site. Additionally, the study provides greater insight on the practice of green construction among contractors by showing that the effect of HSP on CS would differ considerably on account of the level of GCPs adopted.

Green standard model using machine learning: identifying threats and opportunities facing the implementation of green building in Iran

Residential buildings consume a major portion of energy resources and hence are seriously involved in environmental pollution. In Iran, fossil fuel consumption is growing, such that it increased by more than 400% from 1990 to 2018. One of the fundamental solutions for reducing fossil fuel consumption and creating a healthy environment inside and outside buildings is implementing and developing green buildings. This study seeks to examine the barriers to and opportunities for developing green buildings and proposes a localized green standard appropriate for the conditions of Iran. To this end, the required parameters were identified using the opinions of experts and the Delphi method. The opinions of 81 building experts, including the employers, consultants, and contractors, were obtained using a three-part questionnaire. Based on the results from the machine learning method, the score of the localized green building in five dimensions, namely, site, water, energy, materials, and quality of the indoor environment was calculated to be 77.2, while the energy dimension was determined to be the most important green standard dimension with a significance coefficient of 0.548. In the ranking analysis of all parameters using the Friedman test, the parameters of energy consumption management, renewable energy usage, and thermal zoning received the highest scores among other factors. Furthermore, a lack of awareness on green buildings (77%) and a high potential for renewable energy production (81%) were respectively identified as the biggest barrier to and opportunity for the implementation of green buildings in Iran.

Dynamic reward and penalty strategies of green building construction incentive: an evolutionary game theory-based analysis

Green building incentives are widely adopted in the world to promote green building construction. However, the incentives from the government are usually predetermined, which cannot obtain a stable effect in green construction practice. To better promote green building construction, this paper studies dynamic government's reward and penalty evolution during the construction process. Based on the prospect theory, the decision of government reward and penalty is formulated as evolutionary game model under four different scenarios: static reward and static penalty, dynamic reward and static penalty, static reward and dynamic penalty, and dynamic reward and dynamic penalty. Through theoretical analysis, our results revealed that the dynamic reward and static penalty is the best strategy to promote green building construction. More specifically, if the intensity of subsidy and penalty increases, contractors tend to green construction; while the probability of active supervision by government is inversely proportional to subsidy and positively proportional to penalty. This study can provide a useful insight for the policy makers to formulate effective reward and penalty policy, thereby standardizing the behavior of contractors, and reducing the negative impact of the construction industry on the environment.

Critical Barriers to Environmental Management System Implementation in the Nigerian Construction Industry

The impact of different hazardous substances of the construction industry being released to the environment is alarming. This constitutes an adverse effect on the quality of life of construction workers and the populace at large. To reduce this menace, Environmental Management System (EMS) was put in place. Meanwhile, the implementation of EMS in the Nigerian construction industry (NCI) is not certain. This study, therefore, investigated the barriers to EMS implementation in the NCI to group them into a smaller form, i.e., fewer numbers. A questionnaire survey was developed and administered to construction professionals in Nigeria using a purposive sampling technique. The retrieved 106 copies of the questionnaires were subjected to both descriptive and inferential statistics such as mean score, standard deviation, analysis of variance test, post hoc test and exploratory factor analysis. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted three times to identify the critical barriers to EMS implementation in the NCI. The study findings reveal three main categories of barriers affecting EMS implementation, namely; (1) knowledge barrier; (2) process barrier; and (3) culture and management barrier. The study concluded that the three factors indicate the major cardinal barriers that could describe the impediment of EMS in the NCI. It was recommended that the training of construction professionals is important to enhance improvement culture in the NCI.

Sustainable construction through energy management practices in developing economies: an analysis of barriers in the construction sector

In the recent era, energy management practices (EMPs) have gained significant importance in developed countries, due to their cost efficiency and the potential to protect the environment. However, developing countries are not particularly serious about adopting and implementing sustainable construction practices, due to the different barriers that hinder them from doing so. Therefore, the complete adoption of effective EMPs is still at the initial stage. The objective of this study is to identify the barriers to EMPs adoption, in the construction sector of Pakistan. Initially, the barriers were identified from the earlier studies and screened by the fuzzy Delphi method (FDM). These screened barriers were then evaluated through the ISM. The results of the ISM show that there happens to be a "lack of communication and collaboration among project stakeholders," "attitudinal, cultural and behavioral resistance to adopt EMPs", "lack of top management support and interest in energy management issues," "no condition for implementing EMPs on construction site," and "lack of financing schemes to implement energy management technology," as the top barriers to EMPs adoption in the construction projects pertaining to Pakistan. Thus in this regard, this study empirically contributes to EMPs literature that is based on the developing countries and supports the policymakers in developing appropriate strategies to reduce energy consumption in construction projects-especially in developing countries.

Developing and Applying a Model for Evaluating Risks Affecting Greening Existing Buildings

Improving building performance through reducing negative environmental impacts can be achieved by greening existing buildings (GEB), which is considered a very important sustainability process. Due to the risky and uncertain nature of the process of GEB, a growing amount of attention should be given to eliminating the effects of risks on GEB. This research aims to identify most expected risk factors related to GEB, as well as to evaluate their effects through calculating risk factor characteristics, such as risk factor presence (RFP), impact on the GEB process (IGEB), and impact on building performance in the long run (IBP), as new indices describe these risks. Sixty-six risk factors were categorized in seven risk groups related to the economic aspect, social aspect, environmental aspect, managerial aspect, sustainability operation, sustainable design, and renovation. Moreover, a fuzzy model for risk analysis was developed to combine the multi-effects of the aforementioned three risk factor characteristics in one index representing the risk factors’ overall importance. The model was applied and verified for data collected in Saudi Arabia. The results of this study showed that the most important risk group is the greening process of environmental control, while the least important is the greening process of renovation and construction. Using the proposed model improved the results of evaluating risks affecting GEB through merging the multi-effects of risk factor characteristics. The results and analysis proved that the most important key risk factors were environmental in nature. An intricate relationship of the impacts on the GEB process and building performance with the overall importance of the risk factors was clearly found. The decision makers who deal with greening projects in Saudi Arabia should be aware of the key risks identified in this study. The proposed methodology and model can be easily applied to other countries to help decision makers in evaluating their GEB projects, as well as comparing more greening projects based on risk analysis.

The assessment of buildings and constructions sector of economy proposal: an environmental perspective

Environmental impact assessment methods suffer from an applicability issue which could impede their use and development. The main subject of this article is to present a method to evaluate the applicability of building environmental assessment method in a given country. Here, when we say that a method is applicable in a given country, it means that it could be widely used and that it could produce the expected effects in terms of energy savings, environmental impact minimization, economic gain, etc. So, for this applicability evaluation purpose, the main criteria that affect the building environmental assessment method applicability were identified and were weighted by studying different scenarios. Then, the evaluation method was applied to the Tunisian case. Moreover, in order to contribute to a better understanding of the importance of building environmental assessment method implementation, stakes related thereto are reviewed. It was reported that building environmental assessment method would concur to improve building energy efficiency, enhance social capital, and contribute to environmental, social, and economic stability. In addition, it could be one of the major solutions for the collection of statistical data, which in turn would contribute to the success of projects undertaken as part of the green economy. Eventually, the building environmental assessment could be one of the major green marketing tools and should be taken into account by a company to improve profitability. The developed method and the presented stakes could be a good management and decision making tools and could help legislators and policy-makers for the best implementation of building environmental assessment method.

Management and environmental sustainability – guidelines for architectural and engineering design firms

Purpose

The objective of this paper is to draw up management guidelines on environmental sustainability for architectural and engineering design firms.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is derived from a research experience between 2010 and 2018. That experience comes from three source sets: Management Development Program for Design Firms from the Research Line of Management Design, Department of Civil Construction Engineering, University of São Paulo in Brazil; papers including a doctoral thesis; and literature review. Revisiting and investigating processes were conducted by research questions, resulting in lessons learned, management difficulties and guidelines.

Findings

The guidelines were drawn up from a strategic sphere, understanding internal and external factors to the firm, diagnosis of the firm's management and sustainability, a building sustainability plan, implications of the plan for management processes, plan monitoring and control and plan evaluation.

Research limitations/implications

The studies were mostly conducted in Brazil, and one of them in the USA. Other studies could be carried out in other countries comparing findings or implementing the guidelines.

Practical implications

The findings will provide feedback to Management Development Program for Design Firms (PDGEP) in the action research method. Moreover, the knowledge about firm's capabilities can advance understanding of architectural and engineering (AE) design firm management as support for sustainability, performance and building information modeling (BIM).

Originality/value

Architectural and engineering design firms are hardly discussed; design is treated in the building project context, giving prominence to technical solutions, not to management ones.