Exploring critical success factors for managing sustainability in construction projects

The modern construction industry has met several barriers on its way to sustainability, including issues of financial and risk disincentive or the lack of clients’ awareness. In order to overcome these, the project management team needs to have clear guidance on how to manage sustainability in building projects, which does not exist at the moment in the current project management standards and tools. However, to be able to develop project management guidance, it is essential to first understand the critical success factors (CSFs) for sustainability management. For this purpose, an extensive literature review carried out on the topics related project management led to the identification of 30 potential factors contributing to the achievement of sustainability in construction projects, which were then categorised under five groups of factors. In order to understand the relationships between these groups of factors in real projects, a structured questionnaire containing these CSFs was carried out with the participation of experienced professionals in the UK, and 144 valid responses were retrieved. Structural equation modelling technique was used to analyse data collected. The research finding shows that sustainability assessment and stakeholder management has positive and significant impacts on the achievement of sustainable project success. The results also identified inter-relationships among the five groups of factors in a way that sustainability goals are highly required to give project team sufficient power and allow them to use proper abilities in managing stakeholder, in planning and assessment of project toward sustainability; and finally, sustainability planning is a supportive preparation for the sustainability assessment of buildings.