Drivers of environmental sustainability of construction projects: a thematic analysis of verbatim comments from built environment consultants

Opoku, De-Graft Joe; Agyekum, Kofı; Ayarkwa, Joshua

doi:10.1080/15623599.2019.1678865

Cited by 32 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Despite this range of qualified professionals working in the industry, studies have shown that the industry is characterized by unprofessional practices (Manu et al , 2019; Adinyira et al , 2018; Ameyaw et al , 2017). Apart from the high prevalence of ethical misconducts, other studies list some of the unprofessional practices to include inadequate planning (Twumasi-Ampofo et al , 2013) and unsustainable building construction practices (Agyekum et al , 2020; Agyekum et al , 2019; Ampratwum et al , 2019; Opoku et al , 2019). Notwithstanding these deficiencies, Ofori (2012) indicated that the stakeholders within the industry have the power and capacity to influence the positive changes necessary to improve the state of the industry.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethical misconducts within the invitation to tender and tender evaluation and award stages of construction contracts in Ghana

Agyekum

Adinyira

Amudjie

2021

JEDT

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the views of construction practitioners on the prevalence of ethical misconduct within the invitation to tender and tender evaluation and award stages of construction contracts in Ghana. Design/methodology/approach Following a critical comparative review of literature resulting in the identification of 18 potential misconducts within the invitation to tender and 11 potential misconducts within the tender evaluation and award stages of construction contracts, a questionnaire survey was conducted among 65 construction professionals. Data obtained from the survey were analysed using both descriptive (i.e. frequencies, mean scores and standard deviations) and inferential statistics (paired t-test), followed by gap analysis. Findings The findings revealed that corrupt, fraudulent, collusive or coercive practices, client divulging more information to the preferred bidder and inflating tender prices by tenderers in return for kickbacks are key unethical practices prevalent at the invitation to tender stage. Following these key unethical practices, the findings further suggested through gap analysis that submission of bids on non-working days and inadequate time for preparation and submission of tenders were the top two unethical practices that needed serious interventions at this stage. At the tender evaluation and award stage, the findings revealed that interference by influential people in political positions, fake tendering and bid shopping are prevalent. Again, from the gap analysis, interference by influential people in political positions and poor definition of selection criteria were identified to be the two key unethical practices that need urgent intervention at this stage of construction contracts. Practical implications This study holds a significant practical implication in the sense that key unethical practices at the invitation to tender and tender evaluation and award stages of construction contracts have been identified, and this provides a suitable basis for stakeholders that spearhead such activities to offer suitable interventions to control such practices. Originality/value This study contributes to the body of knowledge as it uncovers ethical misconducts within two important phases of construction contracts in a developing country setting. As there is a continuous effort by the international community towards finding lasting solutions to such misconducts, the findings from this study can be used as a starting point for appropriate policies to be put in place in Ghana to control such misconducts.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethical misconducts within the invitation to tender and tender evaluation and award stages of construction contracts in Ghana

Agyekum

Adinyira

Amudjie

2021

JEDT

Self Cite

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“…Authors had tried to estimate aggregating weights with methodologies such as factor analysis or principal component methods [12][13][14]. Third, scholars have also begun to examine the factors that may be related to the environment [1,15,16], among which economic factors receive the most attention [17]. Economy is one of the aspects of human development and the degree of economic development also means the state of human development [18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Research on the Relationship between Environmental Sustainability Management and Human Development

Lai

Chen

2020

Sustainability

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The study explores the relationship between environmental performance and human development. A canonical correlation analysis was conducted to discover the maximum correlation between environmental performance and human development with the optimal estimated weights for indicators as constituting the composite indices. The results show that environmental health—being the most decisive—and ecosystem vitality are important indicators for representing the environmental performance. Other important indicators, in declining order, for constituting the human development index are mean years of schooling, expected years of schooling, and life expectancy at birth, with gross national income (GNI) being the last with relatively low weight. The canonical environmental performance index has utmost effect on mean years of schooling, then expected years of schooling, with explanatory power of more than 70% for both. Effect on life expectancy at birth is more than 60%, but only less than 30% on GNI. The canonical human development index has the highest explanatory power with nearly 80% for environmental health, but only 40% for ecosystem vitality. Both canonical composite indices reach a high correlation of 91% and the mutual explanatory power is 83%, confirming that environmental performance and human development are indeed positively and highly correlated.

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“…The concept of sustainable development is integrated with the construction industry in the form of sustainable construction, to create and manage a safe and healthy built environment, along with efficient resource utilization [8]. While construction projects must adopt all sustainability pillars and environmental sustainability in particular [58], barriers such as technological complexity, supposedly high initial costs, lack of knowledge, and environmental circumstances, negatively impact the adoption of environmental sustainability in the construction of projects [59]. Therefore, it could be that many countries are experiencing lower levels of sustainability adoption by the construction industry [60].…”

Section: Keyword Retrieval and Standardizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In some cases, drivers of sustainability are mixed with goals of sustainability because they are often interconnected [105]. Notably, the drivers represent the factors that force/push firms towards integrating and implementing sustainability into construction projects, while goals are the outcomes that companies desire to achieve through practicing sustainability into their projects [58]. Presumably, environmental challenges such as the limited natural world, ever-increasing energy prices [106], demanding stakeholders, and stricter environmental regulations [107] act as the drivers of sustainability.…”

Section: Drivers Of Sustainable Constructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability in Construction Projects: A Systematic Literature Review

et al. 2021

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This paper aims to identify the major research concepts studied in the literature of sustainability in construction projects. Two bibliometric analysis tools—(a) BibExcel and (b) Gephi, were used to analyze the bibliometrics indices of papers and visualize their interrelations as a network, respectively. Therefore, a research focus parallelship network (RFPN) analysis and keyword co-occurrence network (KCON) analysis were performed to uncover the primary research themes. The RFPN analysis clustered the studies into three major categories of evaluating sustainability, project management for sustainability, and drivers of sustainable construction. The KCON analysis revealed that while each paper had a different focus, the underlying concept of all clusters was sustainability, construction, and project management. We found that while ‘sustainability’ was the leading keyword in the first cluster, i.e., evaluating sustainability, it was the second top keyword with the eigenvector centrality of over 0.94 in the other two clusters. We also found that the concept of sustainability should be included in construction projects from the early stages of design and feasibility studies and must be monitored throughout the project life. This review showed that previous researchers used a variety of statistical and mathematical techniques such as structural equation modelling and fuzzy decision-making methods to study sustainability in construction projects. Using an integrated approach to identifying the research gaps in this area, this paper provides researchers with insights on how to frame new research to study sustainability in construction projects.

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Drivers of environmental sustainability of construction projects: a thematic analysis of verbatim comments from built environment consultants

Cited by 32 publications

References 36 publications

Ethical misconducts within the invitation to tender and tender evaluation and award stages of construction contracts in Ghana

Ethical misconducts within the invitation to tender and tender evaluation and award stages of construction contracts in Ghana

A Research on the Relationship between Environmental Sustainability Management and Human Development

Sustainability in Construction Projects: A Systematic Literature Review

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