Sustainable Construction In Malaysia Developers' Awareness.

The creation of a sustainable future depends on the knowledge and involvement• of the people, as well as an understanding of the consequences of individual actions

Sustainable Construction in Malaysia – Developers’ Awareness.

The creation of a sustainable future depends on the knowledge and involvement of the people, as well as an understanding of the consequences of individual actions

The Challenges of Green Construction in Oman

Oman has seen rapid growth in construction industry with the blooming of many new infrastructure projects. The conventional way of approaching construction projects in the past makes introducing sustainable construction a major challenge. The country has a sound environmental law, however, the effectiveness of its implementation is unclear.Green or sustainable concept is still new to Omani people and as such many initiatives to promote the concept are necessary. In line with the green development of its neighboring countries, Oman should act fast to be at par with them. This paper explores the progress of green construction in the industryto understand how far this concept has penetrated the industry. A survey has been conducted among construction practitioners in Oman focusing on the current progress and barriers of implementation.A total of 12 barriers of implementation have been identified of which the lack of demand for green construction and lack of pressure by government are the top two.The findings suggest that many more efforts are necessary to push green construction to the forefront and the government should play a major role in this development

Involvement Of Sustainability Issues In Value Management: Requisite Factors

For construction to play its part in making society more sustainable, the project practitioners and the decision makers must confront with social, economic and environmental issues throughout the project life

Using value management to improve the consideration of sustainability within construction

This research was founded in the perception that value management (VM) can play a vital role in promoting sustainability thinking and issues at critical decision making times in the early stages of the construction project process. As a value enhancement technique, VM should have included many differing issues of sustainability, as they would affect the quality of the outcome. The term sustainability may not be used frequently in VM, but issues such as energy efficient, minimisation of waste, good indoor environment, visual effects, low running cost, user comfort for example, are basic considerations for VM practitioners. The features of VM such as the role of VM participants, knowledge dissemination opportunity, strategic time, effective process and effective tools and techniques, lend VM into considering issues related to sustainability. However, the absence of research-based literature and the superficial discussion in this area by existing published papers indicated that the use of VM to integrate sustainability into construction has not been given much attention by either researchers or the VM community in the UK. The lack of information in this area is unsettling. It leads to the perception that VM community and researchers are unaware of the importance of integrating sustainability issues into VM and the potential of VM in bringing sustainability into projects. To remedy this situation, it was proposed to increase the knowledge about the integration of sustainability within VM, before enabling deeper evaluation of the consideration given to sustainability issues within present practices of VM. Thus, the aims of this research are firstly, to propose the use of VM as a means to integrate sustainability issues into the early stages of a construction project and secondly, to enable the evaluation of the quality and quantity of consideration given to the issues of sustainability within VM practices. In achieving the first aim, arguments were made to support the use of VM for improving sustainability consideration in project process by discussing the inherent strengths of VM and the relationship that exists between these two. It was revealed that the levels of sustainability consideration varied across workshops. The cause of the variation on sustainability consideration was still unclear but it was believed that part of it was due to the barriers to integration that had been identified in Survey 2. To achieve the second aim, this research has developed an evaluation tool called ASVM. This tool was subjected to two evaluation phases to validate and verify its use and limitations before it can be introduced to the industry. In the first evaluation phase, called the testing exercise, the tool was brought into VM workshops and then used to assess the consideration given to sustainability issues within those workshops. The second evaluation phase, called the verification study, took place to evaluate the tool's usefulness and practicability. It was concluded that the ASVM tool can be used to evaluate the consideration of sustainability issues in VM but a few improvements to the tool are necessary before it can be adapted to the industry. Lessons learned from these studies were discussed and the use of the ASVM tool in the VM workshop was reevaluated. Based on the findings of these two activities, the integration of sustainability within VM was reappraised. This research lays the foundation of new thinking in construction, as sustainability is a vision for tomorrow and VM should continuously improve the provision of services to meet the growing demand for better value and quality.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Konsep dan amalan kesedaran terhadap isu-isu alam sekitar di peringkat awalan projek pembinaan melalui fasa pengurusan nilai.

Pembangunan pesat sesebuah komuniti amat diperlukan untuk meningkatkan ekonomi terutama dalam melibatkan industri pembinaan.Namun, kealpaan dalam mengejar pembangunan yang pesat seringkali mengabaikan aspek kelestarian alam sekitar. Menyedari akan pentingnya kelestarian alam sekitar dalam sektor pembinaan maka, kajian ini adalah bertujuan untuk mengenalpasti dan mengkaji tahap keprihatinan kelestarian alam sekitar dan pengamalan menerusi projek pembinaan di peringkat pra-pembinaan

Identification Of Factors Influencing Costs In Green Projects

Cost has always been the leading concern in green building development. The perception that construction cost for green building is higher than conventional buildings has only made the discussion of green building cost more difficult. Understanding the factors that will influence the cost of greenconstruction is expected to shed light into what makes green construction more or at par with conventional projects, or perhaps, where cost can be optimised. This paper identifies the elements of cost before shifting the attention to the influencing factors. Findings from past studies uncovered various factors related to cost which are grouped into five focal themes i.e. awareness, knowledge, financial, technical, and government support. A conceptual framework is produced in a form of a flower diagram indicating the cost influencing factors of green building development. These factors were found to be both physical and non-physical aspects of a project. The framework provides ground for the next stage of research that is to further explore how these factors influence the project cost and decision making

Eco-innovation Adoption in Malaysian Contractor Firms: Understanding the Components and Drivers

Eco-innovation (EI) is a concept that integrates eco-consciousness within innovation development.  While EI has been widely applied in the manufacturing industry, its adoption in the construction sector remains uncertain. The rising concern of environmental impacts on construction necessitates the importance of finding more innovative ways to push environmental needs within the complexity of projects’ design and methods. Contractors hold a strategic position to promote and adopt EI into management, construction, and development. This paper explores 1) the adoption level of EI practices and 2) the relationship between the adoption of EI practices and the factors that drive EI, within the Malaysian contractor firms. A questionnaire survey was developed using 18 EI components and four driving factors. A total of 95 Grade G7 contractor firms responded to the survey. The survey revealed that the level of EI adoption in contractor firms is still at a moderate pace. The results showed that organisational EI is a crucial component that supports the firm’s eco-innovative management approach to improve firm’s environmental performance. The results indicated that all four driving factors have a positive relationship with the implementation of EI. Technology factor was identified as crucial in influencing better adoption of EI in contractor firms. Findings from this study are beneficial to develop a framework on strategies to increase the EI adoption rate among the contractor firms and deepen the understanding of EI implementation at the firm level, further extending to the project site level

A cost-reduction of self-compacting concrete incorporating raw rice husk ash

The higher material cost of self-compacting concrete (SCC) as compared to normal vibrated concrete is mainly due to its higher cement content. In order to produce economical SCC, a significant amount of cement should be replaced with cheaper material options, which are commonly found in byproduct materials such as limestone powder (LP), fly ash (FA) and raw rice husk ash (RRHA). However, the use of these byproduct materials to replace the high volumes of cement in an SCC mixture will produce deleterious effects such as strength reduction. Thus, the objective of this paper is to investigate the optimum SCC mixture proportioning capable of minimizing SCC’s material cost. A total of fifteen mixes were prepared. This study showed that raw rice husk ash exhibited positive correlations with fly ash and fine limestone powder and were able to produce high compressive and comparable to normal concrete. The SCC-mix made with quaternary cement-blend comprising OPC/LP/FA/RRHA at 55/15/15/15 weight percentage ratio is found to be capable of maximizing SCC’s material-cost reduction to almost 19% as compared with the control mi

A Framework of Eco-innovation Strategies and Competitive Advantages in Contractor Firms

Eco-innovation (EI) is vital for the contractor firm in order to reduce all the negative impacts of construction activities on the environment and reach governments’ green requirement. EI strategies refer to the capabilities of a firm to build an environment that supports innovation and green practices. The contribution of the construction industry towards environmental degradation due to rapid development in the urban area and unsustainable way of past construction had increase awareness toward EI. However, the study on EI in the construction industry has received much less attention even though EI capable to improve contractor firm’s competitiveness and sustaining business endeavour. Thus, this paper aims to identify appropriate strategies which drive and enhance implementation of EI in the contractor firms. The dynamic capabilities theory is adopted as the premise to examine a firm’s ability to sense, seize and reconfigure its capabilities to accomplish the environmental goal in its business strategy. A literature review is carried out to determine the EI strategies that crucial to improve the conservative construction practices toward green. Content analysis is adopted through interpretation and text data coding. The study unveils five EI strategies which are human resources development, technology advancement, collaboration and networking, knowledge empowerment and management proactiveness strategy. A framework representing the EI strategies that beneficial to contractor firms to become eco-innovative and competitive is presented. This framework will be a guide to contractor firm to enhance firm competitive advantages and drive environmental sustainability simultaneously