Evaluating Perspectives on Sustainability Among Construction Project Managers: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Abstract The discipline of project management has recently recognized the need to shift construction projects away from old methods and toward more sustainable practices. The perspective of construction project managers on sustainability will have a significant impact on this transition. The aim of this systematic review is to help in maximising the current knowledge regarding the construction project managers’ perspectives on sustainability. In addition, it aims to help in understanding the influence of the development status of the country by comparing the perceptions of construction project managers in developed and developing countries. This is a textual narrative synthesis systematic review. Papers published in the main databases Web of Science, Scopus and Goggle Scholar and were published between 2010 to 2021 were assessed according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Type of studies included in the search were survey, questioner and interviews studies. Further citation and references searching was conducted for the papers that was included in the review. Retreated papers were transferred to an excel sheet for full article assessment, data extraction and quality assessment. For this systematic review, Zhou et al. (2015) guidelines were used to develop criteria checklist for assessing the papers quality. Only six papers that was published between 2016 and 2021, were included in this review. The review found that there is a variation in the level of the awareness and knowledge of sustainability among construction project managers in developed and developing countries. There is a strong effect of the construction firms’ skills and their interrelationship with stakeholders in implementing sustainable construction projects which will affect the project success in both developed and developing countries. There is a lack of mentioning sustainability in the procurement paperwork in developing countries. The perception of sustainability in developing countries were focused mainly on the environmental aspects, however, this emphasis was also seen in developed countries. Many factors have influenced this such as stakeholder willingness, economic status, cultural and educational factors, and transferring the knowledge into practice. Sustainability in construction was rarely include in the procurement paperwork both in developing and developed countries. There are limited studies that investigated the perception of sustainability among construction project managers and whether the developmental status of the countries has an influence on their views. Therefore, it is recommended for future research to investigate the views of construction project managers and the effect of the countries’ developmental status on their sustainability perception.