Barriers to Achieving Sustainability in Highway Construction Projects: The Case of Jordan

Abstract

Despite the importance of sustainable highway construction projects in achieving sustainable development, unsustainable construction highway projects still prevail in Jordan. Therefore, this article aims to identify barriers affecting sustainability implementation in Jordan’s highway construction projects. These barriers were identified from the previous literature. Questionnaire surveys were developed and distributed to experts to rank the degree of importance of each barrier. Moreover, a case study was assessed to evaluate the sustainability level of highway projects in Jordan. The research found that the sustainability concept should be supported financially to protect the environment by using a legislative framework to implement sustainability principles. There are several barriers to implementing the concept, like the lack of sustainability education, improper communication amongst team members, and the lack of familiarity with the techniques and the necessary skills to employ them properly. The use of sustainability assessment tools is needed to evaluate the sustainability level for highway projects. For the case study, a sustainability assessment tool was applied to the most recent important highway project in Jordan, “Bus Rapid Transit project,” to determine its sustainability level and to show how the barriers affect the implementation of the sustainable highway project and lower the sustainability level in the project.