Readiness of Malaysia’s construction industry in adopting green building rating tools

Abstract

Abstract Awareness on environmental issue is increasing along with the development of technology. People started to expand their efforts in reducing the environmental impact and buildings started to be recognized as major contributors to the world’s environmental issues. Green Building (GB) Practices are being promoted widely in construction industry. In conjunction with it, different countries including Malaysia started to introduce their own Green Building Rating Tools (GBRT) to meet the development of sustainable construction. This paper intents to study the current practices of Green Building Rating Tools adopting in Malaysia by identifying the barriers and success factors of the development of rating tools, and to propose strategies in promoting rating tools in construction industry. Throughout this study, the experts from construction industry limited to Klang Valley areas in Malaysia were selected as target respondents. Questionnaires were sent out to the list of respondents manually, as well as via e-mail. Out of 100 sets, a total of 83 (83%) set of questionnaires were respond. IBM SPSS software was adopted to analyse the data collected from the quantitative method. Based on result, Green Building Index (GBI) is the most commonly known and widely adopted rating tool in Malaysia. The main factors hindering the development of other rating tools mainly due to the financial problem of most companies and the lack of understanding by public. Strategies like education, workshop, collaboration and enforcement of building rules by government should be implemented immediately if the widely adoption of rating tools in Malaysia’s construction industry is to be achieved.