Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore the practice of engaging key project consultants for the development of green projects in Malaysia.

A qualitative approach is adopted in this research using the face-to-face semi-structured interview process with 18 respondents consisting of developers and architects of green projects that have obtained green certification by the Malaysian Green Building Index.

The engagement of consultants is divided into three stages: engagement method; consultant selection method; and evaluation process. The engagement method can be initiated by the client or through the architect. The direct selection is the preferred strategy in engaging architects, while open strategy is commonly adopted for engaging other key consultants. The evaluation process consists of request for proposal evaluation and negotiation before appointment is awarded. In addition, there are four main criteria in selecting the consultants: client’s preference, fee flexibility, green project requirement and consultant firm’s internal strengths.

The study is based on the Malaysian context and based on the engagement of main consultants in green development projects and, thus, cannot be generalised to other consultants’ engagement in conventional projects.

This research presents the process that can contribute to better planning, controlling and management of the consultants’ engagement process. The selection criteria shall form a reference in selecting the most suitable consultants for the project.

This study attempts to understand how consultants are engaged in green projects, an important management stage in project initiation, but has received little attention in the past.

This study aims to address research gaps by constructing critical success factors (CSFs) in the context of green hotel investment in Taiwan. It contributes to the domain knowledge to cultivate Taiwan’s green hotel development in the future.

The authors secured 20 prominent green hotel management/owners/architects as crucial informants. The first stage used the Delphi method to collect expert opinions (i.e. CSFs) and the second stage applied the analytic hierarchy process to analyze the importance of CSFs.

The results show that the “financial investment benefits” is considered the most crucial success factor for the green hotel investment. However, to balance long-term economic development with environmental impact, green hotel investors should consider other aspects of the research to sustain future financial performance returns.

Further studies should consider regional characteristics to accommodate geographic/social differences and hotel types to explore possible CSFs for the green hotel investment. The authors suggest including panel experts from government officials and prominent scholars to represent a broader but different view on subject matters. They also offer implications for investors’ governmental policies, hotelier cognition and customer-related aspects in green hotel investment.

This study built a hierarchical framework based on the CSF concept by evaluating priority differences between hotel management and hotel owners/architects. Such findings help investors’ effective decision-making through considering factors’ relative importance for green hotel investments.

The environmental performance of organizations has come under public policy limelight since the phenomenal increase of natural resource degradation and industrial waste. Thus, green concepts have been put forward, but the implementation of green practices faces many barriers and challenges. These barriers require attention as organizational practices are negatively affecting the environment leading to global warming and climate change. Therefore, this chapter systematically identifies four internal barriers including inadequate management commitment and support, insufficient technology competence and infrastructure, financial constraints, the uncertainty of economic benefits, and eight sub barriers within an organization concerning green concepts implementation. Moreover, this chapter also identifies four external barriers including lack of stakeholder's interest, inadequate environmental administrative support, scarce academic research, and lack of green collaborative practices, and eight sub barriers outside an organizational context concerning green concept implementation. The barriers in this research were identified by reviewing the existing literature on the topic. This chapter advances the green literature by identifying multiple barriers and challenges to the successful implementation of green concepts in organizations. This is of significance as if these barriers are tackled strategically, it would reduce environmental degradation problems and help make financial gains. Moreover, this research can help managers understand the key barriers to green concept implementation and provide guidance to them when attempting to implement green practices in their organizations. This research would also motivate researchers to extend further investigation on how to overcome such barriers and find out strategies to mitigate the barriers to green concept implementation to effectively address environmental issues.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and model critical barriers to sustainable practices implementation in Indian oil and gas sectors by the interpretive structural modeling (ISM) approach.

In this paper, through exhaustive literature survey and experts opinions, 14 critical barriers were identified, and the ISM tool, which is a multi-criteria decision-making approach, was used to establish interrelationship among the identified barriers and to determine the key barriers having high driving power.

After analyzing, it was found that six barriers, namely, market competition and uncertainty (B7), shortage of resources (B8), governmental rules and regulations (B1), knowledge and training (B2), financial implications (B3), and management commitment and leadership (B5) were found to have high influencing power. These barriers need the maximum attention and organizations need to overcome these hindrances for the effective implementation of sustainable practices. From the driving and dependence power diagram, two barriers, namely, management commitment and leadership (B5) and knowledge and training (B2) were found to have the highest driving power and two barriers, namely, lack of green initiatives (B9) and lack of corporate social responsibility (B14) were found to have highest dependence power.

The presently developed model is based on the experts’ opinions, which may be biased, influencing the final output of the structural model. The research implications of the developed model are to help managers of the organization in understanding significance of the barriers, to prioritize or eliminate the same for the practical implementation of sustainability.

This is for the first time an attempt has been made to apply the ISM methodology to explore the interdependencies among the critical barriers for Indian oil and gas industries. This paper will guide the managers at various levels of an organization for effective implementation of the sustainable practices.

The point of departure for this viewpoint paper is the current development in which landscape architects are working towards achieving the United Nations sustainable development goals and the associated cross-cutting pledge “Leave No One Behind”. The sustainable development goals 3 and 11 can be achieved through landscape projects that are inclusive and health promoting, and the authors argue that an evidence-based design process is needed to ensure that project designs deliver what they promise. However, most landscape architects are not trained in evidence-based design and are therefore unsure of what can be used as evidence. A further challenge is the lack of relevant and applicable research evidence for design processes.

The authors present a process model for evidence-based health design in landscape architecture as an overall framework on which the authors base their arguments. The model includes four topics of evidence: target group, human health, environment and use of nature. For each topic, the authors present their view on what may be considered as evidence and where it can be found or generated. The study view is supported by a detailed presentation of where and how evidence was found and generated in a design project for an accessible and health-promoting forest trail for people with mobility disabilities.

The authors suggest a broad definition of evidence, and that the design process should draw on evidence from relevant research and practice disciplines. Evidence can be found in multiple sources, for example, scientific articles, theoretical works and design guidelines. It can also be generated by landscape architects themselves, for example, through landscape analyses and stakeholder workshops. The evidence should guide and support the landscape architect and not dictate the design process.

The authors hope that the knowledge provided on the evidence-based health design process and on where to collect or how to generate evidence may inspire landscape architects in their future health design projects.

People with mobility disabilities face many health challenges and should potentially be able to benefit from visiting green spaces. The authors hope that the knowledge provided on the evidence-based health design process and on where to collect or how to generate evidence may inspire landscape architects in their future health design projects.

Construction professionals are the major contributors to developing a sustainable construction industry, whereas architects, engineers and quantity surveyors are the key construction professionals who must play extraordinary roles in achieving better sustainable construction. Therefore, this study aims to identify the job attributes of key Sri Lankan construction professionals in addressing challenges associated with climate change.

The study adopted a mixed research approach. A literature review and preliminary semi-structured interviews were used to appraise the job roles of architects, engineers and quantity surveyors in addressing challenges associated with climate change. The data collected through the qualitative approach were used in an online questionnaire survey, and the findings were analysed using the relative index method.

The findings highlight that regardless of the knowledge of the professional category on green rating tools, carbon footprint, adaptation of renewable energies for the reduction of energy consumption, building information modelling-related applications and waste management concepts/practices are the foremost job attributes required for the key Sri Lankan construction professionals in addressing challenges associated with climate change.

The results from this study provide a handful of guidance to construction industry professionals, national and international professional institutions, non-governmental organisations and other relevant authorities to address climate change within the built environment by identifying ways for improving the relevant key job attributes of construction industry professionals.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that explores the job attributes of key Sri Lankan construction professionals in addressing the challenges associated with climate change.

Aiming to find out how to incorporate green building into the architectural curriculum, this study aims to explore the psychological path for cultivating architectural students’ awareness and motivation to learn the green design concepts and related technologies.

Based on a global review of relevant architectural courses in universities, a set of green building learning behaviors was proposed and a survey was conducted in architectural schools in South China to verify the “value-belief-norm” theory through the lens of green building learning behaviors. The psychological path that affects students’ green building learning behaviors was analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results showed that biospheric and altruistic values could directly affect students’ motivation to learn green building, while personal norms served as the mediating condition for personal values and beliefs, and ultimately improved motivation.

The study suggests that the cultivation of environmental awareness and a sense of the ecological crisis should be developed through foundation courses, by establishing an ecological architecture curriculum, to more effectively guide students to learn and practice green building.

This study, for the first time, applied the “value-belief-norm” theory, which was developed to explain the psychological path for pro-environmental behaviors, to green building learning behaviors of architectural students.

Curtailing the adverse environmental impacts of the construction sector is one the major challenges of the twenty-first century. However, despite the significance of this problem, the limited efforts so far to tackle the negative impacts associated with this particular sector have been largely fragmented and disjointed. Given that the net green outcome of a construction project is the sum total of the efforts undertaken at the various supply chain stages (from the initial design to the end-of-life demolition) by different stakeholders, the green supply chain management (GSCM) approach is seen as a way forward toward streamlining the fragmented efforts at greening the sector. This forms the motivation of the present work, and this paper aims to develop, validate and apply a multi-dimensional GSCM framework for the construction sector.

A comprehensive GSCM assessment framework consisting of nine constructs (external and internal drivers; external and internal barriers; core and facilitating GSCM practices; economic, environmental and organizational performance implications) and their underlying factors was developed through an extensive literature review. Using data collected through a structured questionnaire, the framework was validated, and the relevance/appropriateness of each construct and its underlying factors, along with the hypothesized relationships between the constructs, were assessed separately for each supply chain stakeholder.

The findings confirm the validity and reliability of the constructs and their underlying factors as well as the assessment framework. In general, the implementation of green practices has had a positive impact on the environmental, economic and organizational performance for all stakeholders, while the extent of the green practices implemented depends on the relative strength of the drivers and barriers.

This study fills a gap in the literature about applying/implementing GSCM in the construction sector.

The findings provide practitioners, policy makers and organizations associated with the UAE construction sector, as well as the construction sector in general, insight into all key aspects of GSCM.

A comprehensive survey-based assessment of GSCM for the construction sector has not been previously attempted and constitutes the novelty of this work.

The Greenery system on buildings is an interesting approach to address the urban, and environmental issues yet provide economic and social benefits. The educational campus in Higher Learning Institution (HLI) has been regarded as a small city that can implement the greenery system area. Green roofs have rapidly become a key in sustainable building development and design features for urban cities and have started being applied in a campus building. However, the built environment in the campus is mostly covered with the existing buildings. Several studies also conducted green roof aspects but with a vast focus on the new building design. Thus, there is an urgent need to identify retrofitting criteria on green roof implementation for existing buildings to achieve optimal solutions. This chapter aims to identify the influential criteria for implementing green roof initiatives in the educational building of HLI. A list of 12 green roof criteria has been identified based on design and economics. A questionnaire has been designed and distributed to architects as important stakeholders in green roof development. The results obtained were analysed with factor analysis based on principal component analysis with Varimax Rotation and Factor Score to categorise and rank according to the importance of criteria. The outcomes of this study showed that design criteria should concern waterproofing, drainage, and access; economic criteria are construction costs, return on investment, and maintenance cost. This study enables decision-makers to consider the criteria established during the decision of retrofitting an existing building with a green roof.