Schedule management for green building projects in Singapore : schedule delay, causal factors and solutions

With the mounting concern over environmental issues, green construction is gaining a place in the global construction industry. However, rare research has been conducted to analyze green construction projects, especially in the aspect of project schedule performance. As a result, this study aims to investigate the degree of project delay in green building construction, analyze the factors affecting schedule delay of green building projects, and finally provide recommendations to improve schedule performance of green building projects. To achieve the objectives, a comprehensive literature review was carried out, followed by a survey conducted with 30 companies that provided data from 220 traditional and 96 green building projects. The analysis of the responses identified that 15.9% of the traditional building projects were delayed while 32.3% of the green building projects were completed behind schedule. The overall schedule overrun in green building projects was 4.8% of planned schedule. Furthermore, the top 5 factors that can cause delay in green building projects can be: (1) speed of decision-making by client; (2) speed of decision-making involving all project teams; (3) communication/coordination between key parties; (4) level of experience of consultants; and (5) difficulties in financing project by contractors. Lastly, a list of recommendations was introduced, aiming to reduce schedule delay in green building construction projects based on the observations. This study will serve as s a base for further research on the enhancement of green building project schedule performance.