Sustainable Construction in Malaysian Mixed Development Projects: The Barriers and Critical Success Factors

Abstract

Malaysia is in a need of commitment to more sustainable development, rather than a traditional approach ‘grow first, clean up later’ to ensure the protection of environment and not to compromise needs of future generations. Although initiatives for the environmental protection have been introduced in 1960s, they have yet to receive a sufficient level of adoption amongst the construction stakeholders in Malaysia. Therefore, via questionnaire surveys to 130 professionals involved in mixed development projects, this paper aims at investigating barriers to, and critical success factors (CSFs) of sustainable construction (SC) in the mixed development projects in Malaysia. The outcomes translated via the Relative Importance Index (RII) technique reveal that the most critical barriers are SC projects are expensive, unwillingness to change to SC and high cost in purchasing technology, the learning curve cost and employing skilled labour, whilst the most significant CSFs are initial investment, commitment for changing behaviours, policy implementation efforts, guidance for SC, available of technology and materials and project procurement system. This paper focuses on the implementation of SC in delivering mixed development projects in Malaysia that is in line with the Malaysian sustainability goal in adopting the sustainable consumption and production concept. This paper is promoting sustainable development overseen by Malaysia via discussion of the SC directions and practices in delivering the Malaysian mixed development project.