RISK MANAGEMENT IN GREEN RETROFITTING PROJECTS

Abstract

Green retrofitting has been gaining popularity worldwide and in Singapore due to the augmenting cognizance of environmental issues and growing concern over climate change, which was also part of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Sustainable Development (IMCSD) vision of greening 80% of the buildings by 2030. Singapore has gradually shifted the focus towards green construction industry. This can be seen as the number of green buildings increases from a mere 17 in 2005 to more than 1180 in 2012. As more developers opt for green and sustainable development under the pressures of government regulations and public scrutiny, an efficient and effective project management system has to be put in place. Green retrofit projects are generally perceived to be more challenging than traditional retrofit and new green construction projects. However, there is minimal information available to guide the project managers in managing the risk in green retrofit projects. Therefore, this dissertation aims to identify the associated risks in retrofitting existing buildings to green buildings, to assess the criticality of the identified risks and lastly, to propose some recommendations that can response the critical risks. To achieve the objectives, a questionnaire survey was conducted with 30 project managers from various companies. The results indicated post-retrofit tenants cooperation risk, regulatory risk, market risk, financial risks and lastly pre-retrofit tenants cooperation risks as the top 5 critical risks in green retrofit projects. Additionally, the results from the survey uncovered that risks appear to be more critical to green retrofit projects as juxtapose to conventional retrofit. Moreover, a comparison of risk criticality ranking between conventional green retrofit projects was found to differ from those in conventional retrofit projects and only a small number of risks have been identified to have close significance; there is weak relationship. With the help of this study, companies taking part in green construction projects can identify the most critical risks and thus develop appropriate mitigation measures.