The impact of the design team characteristics on the sustainable building construction cost: Structural equation model analysis

The objective of this study was to identify impact of the design team characteristics and project characteristics on the sustainable building construction cost (SBCC) using the structural equation model (SEM). The cost data was drawn from 72 built LEED certified buildings in the United States. The design team characteristics are latent variables used to measure a design team’s performance in the early design stages, which are reflected in six observed variables: skill, experience, communication, collaboration, innovation, and procurement. The project characteristics are also latent variables and are measured in five observed variables: level of sustainability, building type, construction type, technical complexity, and project location. The SEM analysis illustrated that the design team characteristics negatively affected the unit cost (coefficient = −3.119) and cost overrun (coefficient = −0.939). The SEM also showed that project characteristics positively affected the unit cost (coefficient = 1.00). The conclusion indicates that the higher the design team’s skill, the more experienced the design team was, and the fewer communication channels there were, the better the team could mitigate potential risks and uncertainty during the construction phase, hence reducing the risk of cost overrun.