Adoption of Sustainable Value Management (SVM) to Building Projects in a Developing Economy

Abstract

In modern economy, sustainability has become the central issue in improving the quality of life. This study investigated the integration of sustainable value management (SVM) in the construction industry with focus on application, benefits and barriers. The research issue is the insufficient information to construction professionals on the way of integrating sustainable value management and sustainability which hence affect its usefulness in Rwanda’s construction industry. Plenty of works are available in other sectors of the economy but very few in the construction industry. A quantitative research design was used for this study and the population size was 961 construction professionals registered under the Institute of Engineers Rwanda (IER) and Rwanda Institute of Architects-Quantity Surveying chapter (RIA/Qs Chapter). A sample of 132 firms used for the study were determined with the use of Slovin’s formula. The survey findings indicated that risk analysis, SWOT analysis, Simple Multi-Attribute Rating Technique (SMART) methodology, lessons learned technique, and cost-benefit analysis are the most known SVM techniques. On the other hand, the results show that risk analysis, cost-benefit analysis, SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis, SMART methodology and target costing are the most applied SVM techniques. Regarding benefits, ensuring that projects are delivered in the most cost-effective way was overall ranked first followed by reduction of overall cost and enhancing and promoting teamspirit. Limited political will, legislation, and enforcement at various governmental levels was identified as the most hampering factor to proper practice of SVM. The study concluded that the level of application of sustainable value management significantly depends on the level of awareness. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that the increase awareness of sustainable value management from regulatory bodies to internal organization of the companies would without doubt result to a significant rise of application.