The Barriers of Implementing Green Building in Penang Construction Industry

Abstract

Green practices and strategies in housing development has been proved to bring obvious positive contribution to the environment while green building has been identified as the current trend in environmental protection. However, various benefits and impediments are attracting and holding developers to implement and practice green in their construction projects. Although Green building have been proven to bring significant environmental impact and it has been introduced into Malaysia construction industry for about ten years, only low number of green concepts are spotted in construction projects. Therefore, this research is conducted to identify barriers that restrict the implementation of green building in Penang. Qualitative method is adopted to evaluate the construction projects from the beginning which started from the pre-construction stage to post construction stage. 13 massive developers in Penang construction industry have been selected to participate in this research study to collect their precious experience and opinion upon the implementation and practice of green practices on their current and past construction projects. The research found that property developers are playing crucial roles in making green building a trend. However, there are many impediments that stopping developers from adopting green practices such high initial cost, insufficient of green expertise and lack of collaboration from stakeholders and suppliers. Thus, this study has provided insight to overcoming the barriers in green practices is important to ensure developers can obtain the benefits from constructing green building. It is recommended to clone this study and investigating the actual condition on other states in Malaysia to obtain wider perspective on current construction industry.