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Malaysia is still very much lacking behind in green building developments as compared to other countries such as Australia, Japan, and Singapore. Nevertheless, in order to strengthen the development of green building in Malaysia, government has provided and offers several initiatives to the construction key players in implementing green building such as investment tax allowance for the purchase of green technology equipment and income tax exemption on the use of green technology services and system, etc. Despite of all the incentives introduce, the implementation of green building construction still does not boast as expected and still relatively low. Therefore, this study will identify barriers, issues, and challenges faced by construction key players in implementing green building concepts especially related to green building incentives in their project. The opinions and views of related parties in building industry were obtained from structured interviews and questionnaires to key personnel in construction industry to give a clearer picture of the current situation. This study is succeeded in identifying the barriers and challenges, which mainly categorised into financial incentives, fiscal incentives, and structural incentives. The main issues identified are excessive cost of construction, tax exemption is limited and only for qualified person and legislative challenges. Nonetheless, this study also suggests various ways to overcome the barriers in promoting green building concept in Malaysia towards greener environment.

This chapter aims to examine the linkages between urbanisation, real estate investments and sustainability in Turkey. To do so, theoretical and conceptual frameworks were discussed based on literature review. Through mixed-methods research, primary data were collected via questionnaires from relevant 248 company executives while secondary data were collected from relevant institutions. Data on two case study green buildings were also collected through documents from building owners and project and construction managers. The results show that many urban development, transformation and real estate projects are executed without considering sustainability principles. Thus, nationally, mixed-use real estate and green building projects are limited even though a majority of the companies surveyed (85%) designed and executed projects based on a green structure approach. Generally, the costs of green buildings are higher compared to traditional buildings. There is the need for strategic spatial plans based on reliable cadastre systems, targeting national and regional development in using existing resources efficiently and paying attention to the importance of environmental quality. For the efficiency of real estate markets, advanced real estate market and financing systems and the integration of sustainability principles into decision-making process in planning, design, construction and operation phases of projects should be considered.

The challenges confronting the Nigerian construction industry which led to the adoption of supply chain management (SCM) practice were evaluated in this chapter. It was discovered that the Nigerian construction industry is confronted with fragmentation and poor information management. The stakeholders within the Nigerian construction industry proposed the adoption of SCM to overcome the fragmentation and other shenanigans facing the industry. This chapter revealed that construction supply chain (CSC) practices within the Nigerian construction industry focus on waste elimination by adopting the lean concept. The focus on the lean concept could be attributed to the numerous research related to lean or the enormous waste emanating from the Nigerian construction industry. Regardless of the emphasis on lean, the Nigerian CSC is still confronted with fragmentation and heavy waste generation. Thus, this chapter proposed the adoption of principles and technologies driven by the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) is a paradigm shift for the management of CSC in the country. It was discovered in this chapter that Nigerian construction supply stakeholders had not embraced the technologies and principles of the 4IR. The failure to adopt the technologies driven by the 4IR is attributed to the absence of a CSC model that depicts the management of CSC in alignment with the 4IR. This chapter called for developing a SCM model for the Nigerian construction industry in tandem with the principles and technologies of the 4IR.

The authors provide new quantitative evidence of the relationship between technologies and organizational design in the context of complex one-off products. The systems that produce complex, one-off products in mature, fragmented industries such as construction lack many of the typical organizational features that researchers have deemed critical to product development success (e.g., team familiarity, frequent communication, and strong leadership). In contrast, the complexity of these products requires a diverse knowledge base that is rarely found within a single firm. The one-off nature of construction’s products further requires improvization and development by a distributed network of highly specialized teams. And because the product is complex, significant innovations in the end product require systemic shifts in the product architecture. Riitta Katila, Raymond E. Levitt and Dana Sheffer use an original, hand-collected dataset of the design and construction of 112 energy-efficient “green” buildings in the United States, combined with in-depth fieldwork, to study these questions. A key conclusion is that the mature US construction industry, with its particularly fragmented supply chain, is not well suited to implementing “systemic innovations” that require coordination across trades or stages of the project. However, project integration across specialists with the highest levels of interdependence (i.e., craft, contract integration) mitigates the knowledge and coordination problems. There are implications for research on how technology shapes organizations (and particularly how organizations shape technology), and on the supply chain configuration strategies of firms in the construction industry as well as building owners who are seeking to build the best buildings possible within their budgets.

In recent years, sustainability considerations in the real estate sector have moved from being a niche market phenomenon to a mainstream trend. The movement has been accompanied by a shift in the industry’s perception of sustainable buildings. Traditional cost-saving goals are now complemented by a growing interest in the potential for sustainable buildings to tackle broader economic and social sustainability challenges as well as issues related to health and well-being. The real estate industry is increasingly expected to adapt its strategies to incorporate new and more stringent environmental and urban development requirements, to cater to shifting demographics, and to utilize new advancements in construction processes and materials. This chapter explores recent research on sustainable real estate and highlights some of the newest trends in the market. The chapter then examines how policy and technological advancements can enable real estate developers to tackle environmental, social, and economic sustainability challenges. This will be exemplified through a focus on carbon taxation and timber construction. Based on these case studies, the chapter illustrates how today’s sustainable real estate sector – marked by its move beyond a focus on cost savings – requires for building practices to be strongly rooted in global, sustainable development policies.

The United Nations (UN) sustainable development goals (SDGs) that became effective at the commencement of January 2016 constitute a global community agreement calling for action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity. This chapter looks at the nexus between real estate (RE) and SDGs by investigating the extent to which Ghana's RE sector incorporates, especially, environmental sustainability principles from the design and construction stages to occupation, operation and activities aimed at helping to solve the problem of climate change, thereby, contributing to achieving the SDGs. The chapter is theoretical and, therefore, heavily reliant on critical review of relevant extant literature. The chapter has shown that RE cuts across virtually all the sectors that contribute greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which over the years have generally been increasing. Only a few buildings in both the private and public sectors (six located in three of the 16 administrative regions in the country) are officially classified as green based on three sustainability-rating systems currently used in the country, which suggests that the uptake of green building technologies (GBTs) is rather low leading to the conclusion that at the moment, the RE sector is not contributing much towards the attainment of the SDGs. However, it may be the case that there are buildings, which are sustainable in one form or the other, but because they have not been officially certified, they are not regarded as green – employing the services of the sustainability-rating agencies to certify buildings involve significant costs that might serve as a barrier in accessing their services. Thus, there is the need for country-wide, large-scale studies that systematically investigate the uptake of GBTs in the private and public RE sectors (not necessarily based on using the rating systems) as that may reveal the actual uptake of GBTs and what can be done policy-wise based on the outcomes of such studies.

The UK government’s support for sustainable construction involves an explicit attempt to introduce a new institutional logic into the construction sector, while the use of Building Research Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) as a preferred policy mechanism exemplifies neoliberal use of voluntary self-regulation to promote policy goals. This paper uses the case of BREEAM to examine the role of science and scientific expertise in the exercise of neoliberal governance. More specifically, it combines a neo-institutional analysis of change with Foucault’s theory of governmentality to explore the effect of BREEAM on eight construction projects. The concepts of visibility, knowledge, techniques, and identity provide an analytic grid to explore the effect of BREEAM on understandings and practices of “green building.” Appeals to science and scientific authority are found to be most important in those instances where institutional logics clash and the legitimacy of BREEAM as a carrier of sustainable construction is challenged. From a theoretical perspective, the case studies highlight the role of instruments in the micro-dynamics of institutionalization. Empirically, it underlines the limited, but nonetheless significant, effect of weakly institutionalized neoliberal policy mechanisms.

This exercise exposes students to complex lease transactions, requiring research in the FASB Accounting Standards Codification, archived standards, and future standards (exposure drafts (ED)).

Case study/exercise/assignment.

Students analyze how a retail establishment examines lease transactions to ensure its practices are in line with its mission. Students gain experience researching archived, current, and future standards. Student feedback suggests that students feel the exercise is valuable because it reinforces what they learned in earlier courses and it requires them to understand all aspects related to capital and operating leases. Furthermore, direct assessment data based on grading rubrics indicates that most students meet instructor expectations and indirect assessment data based on student perceptions indicates students are meeting the exercise learning outcomes.

This learning exercise fosters critical thinking skills; emulating professional practice issues and enhancing written and communication skills. It reinforces graduate students’ undergraduate learning related to leases.

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the adoption and use of building information modelling (BIM) for residential real estate development in Nigeria (using Lagos as a case study), with a view to providing information towards improving BIM uptake, which could enhance sustainable housing delivery in the country. A quantitative research methodology was adopted involving the use of questionnaire survey to collect primary data. The data were obtained from private real estate developers in Lagos State. The self-administered questionnaire was distributed to all the 72 active real estate developers in the study area, and the response rate was 62.5%. The collected data were analysed using statistical tools such as frequency and percentages, mean rating and chi-square. The results revealed a low level of awareness and usage of the transformative and contemporary BIM technology (6D BIM version) by real estate developers. It was established that the 2D and 3D BIM traditional versions were the most utilised across the phases of real estate development process. It was also found that the level of BIM utilisation has a significant relationship with the age and asset base of the real estate developers. The chapter concludes by advocating increase in the asset base and organisational profile of real estate developers to enhance BIM adoption, especially, the 6D BIM, which could facilitate sustainable real estate development.