The competitive advantage of sustainable construction site practices among contractors in Malaysia

Abstract

The sustainability of construction projects is an important issue to address since the sector will grow rapidly, especially in developing countries. Excessive resource consumption and climate change due to construction activities have become critical for countries such as Malaysia which have limited natural resources water, electricity and other natural resources. It has increased pressure among construction stakeholders to adopt sustainable practices, especially during the construction phase. As builders of any construction project, contractors play an important role in promoting sustainable development to minimize negative impacts on the environment and society while maximizing their economic contribution. As a result, this research is to investigate the influence of contractors’ sustainable practices during a project’s construction phase and the project’s competitiveness. Forty-five (45) contractors from G1 – G7 are involved in collecting their standpoints on sustainable practices through an online questionnaire survey. Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) was used to analyse the collected data by conducting the Frequency Analysis and Mean Analysis. This study found that the most potential sustainable practice to be implemented is the ‘reduce method’ due to it is the most effective and efficient method to achieve the low production of construction wastes that meets the purpose of sustainability. While the improved image is found as the top potential competitive advantage for contractors when implementing sustainable practices to have a good corporate image to expand their businesses further. As sustainable practices are becoming more crucial, this study provides insight for contractors to foresee the benefits of adopting sustainable practices to increase their project competitiveness further.