Awareness and practices of sustainable construction in Australia: Consultant quantity surveyors’ perception

Abstract

Despite being a key stakeholder of the construction supply chain, little has been known if consultant quantity surveyors (QS) are aware of, understood and employed the concept of sustainable construction at work. This research thus aimed to examine the awareness and practices of consultant QS in sustainable construction and their perceived barriers towards the implementation of sustainable construction. An online questionnaire survey of 40 consultant QS was undertaken and data was analysed using the relative prevalence indexing, one-sample and related-sample Wilcoxon signed tests, and Spearman correlation test. Overall, the results show that the consultant QS respondents had moderate understanding of sustainable construction, and that they generally related the concept to ‘Environment’, ‘Material’, ‘Resource’, and ‘Efficiency’. Furthermore, they had shown moderate awareness of the five principles of sustainable construction but did not practise them at work. The results further indicate that the culture of the construction industry, attitudes of clients and high initial investment costs are the three most significant barriers hindering the implementation of sustainable construction in the industry. Moreover, it seems that the respondents’ effort to practising those five sustainable construction principles could have been negated by the lack of sustainable measurement tools and building codes on sustainability. In moving forward, it is recommended that government and clients should play a more active role in promoting the implementation of sustainable construction.