PROJECT SCHEDULE PERFORMANCE COMPARISON BETWEEN GREEN AND TRADITIONAL BUILDING CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS

Abstract

Over the last few years, the green building movement in Singapore has leaped bountifully. Despite the heighten focus on environmental sustainability for greener construction, rare research has been conducted to analyze green construction projects, especially in the aspect of project schedule performance. Essentially, 39 identified delay factors from various literatures, which were grouped into eight major categories, were examined to determine its impact on green building project schedule performance. The top 5 causes of delay for green building projects include: ‘time for reviewing and approval of design documents’, ‘communication/ coordination between key parties’, ‘speed of decision making by client’, ‘speed of decision making involving all project team’, and ‘mistakes and delay in producing design documents’. The results of analysis suggested that the time taken for green building construction projects were indeed longer than traditional building project schedule. Results revealed that green building projects required 7.77% more time to complete as compared to traditional building projects of similar size and characteristics. In addition, it was observed that 15.91% of the traditional building projects were delayed while 32.29% of the green building projects were completed behind schedule. Further analysis showed that the project design development stage, as well as the planning and feasibility study stage was found to be the most culpable for the extended period of project duration for green building construction projects. A list of recommendations was introduced aiming to ameliorate the schedule performance of green building construction projects based on the observations. Subsequently, this study proves as a basis for further research on the enhancement of future green building project schedule in the local context.