Szydlik, C C (2014) Identifying and overcoming the barriers to sustainable construction. PhD thesis, Missouri University of Science and Technology, USA.
Abstract
Sustainable construction has become increasingly more prevalent over the last decade. All federal and most state government buildings are mandated to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification (at the silver level at a minimum). Although sustainable construction is increasingly more common, there are still barriers to the successful completion of a sustainable project, specifically with regards to projects achieving LEED certification. There are still holes in the guidance on how to successfully achieve LEED certification. Even though government agencies have mandated LEED certification, the existing barriers are preventing buildings from achieving certification, which can delay the building turnover and contract closeout. This project seeks to fill the holes in current guidance for achieving LEED certification and provide a construction management process for managers to use in order to successfully complete a LEED project on time, on schedule, and with no impact to quality. This project also seeks to identify the existing barriers to sustainable construction and the construction management processes that can be implemented in order to overcome the barriers. A survey was conducted to identify which management processes were needed with regards to sustainable construction. A focus group and an industrial application were analyzed to determine if the management practices proposed in this research could overcome the barriers to sustainable construction. Based on this study, the existing barriers to sustainable construction were identified as well as management practices to overcome the barriers.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Grantham, K and Murray, S |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | certification; environmental design; government; leadership; sustainable construction; focus group |
| Index terms: | management practice, government agency, survey, turnover, contract closeout, environmental design, manager, certification, sustainable construction, focus group, industrial application |
| Subjects: | innovation and technology management, administrative processes, data collection methods, practitioner, contract management, sustainability and energy, sustainable construction, business management, management, administrative law |
| Topics: | Roles and Professions, Design Practice, Engineering Principles, Legal Issues, Business Strategy, Contract Administration, Research Practice, Sustainability |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here