Green Building Construction Projects in Singapore
PA
PERS
construction research (Hwang, Zhu,
& Ming, 2017; Wu & Low, 2012). This
study first carried out an extensive literature review from multiple sources,
such as government websites, reports
from private institutions, and journal
papers, to provide a better understanding of the current market situation of
green building and the issues relating
to cost premiums and cost performance
of green building construction projects. Then a survey questionnaire was
subsequently developed ( 1) to capture
the current perceptions of professionals on cost premiums and cost performance of green building projects, ( 2) to
identify the significant reasons for cost
premiums, and ( 3) to gauge the effectiveness of proposed solutions to reduce
green cost premiums and improve
cost performance. The collected data
were analyzed by the Statistic Package
for Social Science (SPSS) statistical
software.
The questionnaire first provided
a definition of green cost premiums,
which was the premise of the sur-
vey. Subsequently, the questionnaire
included questions meant to profile the
companies and respondents. Further-
more, the respondents were asked to
indicate the cost premiums of green
building projects by different project
types and sizes. They were also asked
to rate the significance of the reasons
for the difference in the cost premiums
between green and traditional build-
ing projects by using a five-point scale
( 1 5 strongly disagree, 2 5 disagree,
3 5 neutral, 4 5 agree, and 5 5 strongly
agree). Afterward, the number of tradi-
tional and green building projects with
different cost performance values was
indicated. Finally, the effectiveness of
the solutions to reduce the cost premi-
ums of green buildings and improve
their cost performance was rated by
using the five-point scale ( 1 5 least
efficient, 2 5 somewhat efficient, 3 5
neutral, 4 5 efficient, and 5 5 most effi-
cient). In addition, post-survey inter-
views were carried out with two green
building professionals who had more
characteristics of green buildings and
green construction, Robichaud and
Anantatmula (2011) tried to improve the
chances of delivering the project within
acceptable costs by suggesting some
construction management adjustments
to traditional project management prac-
tices. However, there is generally still
a lack of studies that investigate the
actual cost performance of green build-
ing projects.
A few studies have been conducted
on the cost performance of traditional
building projects as compared with
green building projects. Two indicators commonly used for measuring the
general project cost performance by
the construction industry institute (CII)
(Thomas, Macken, Chung, & Kim, 2002)
are project cost growth and project budget factor. The formulas for the two
indicators are shown in Equation 1 and
Equation 2.
Project
Cost
Growth
5
Actual Total
Project Cost 2
Initial Predicted
Project Cost
Initial Predicted
Project Cost
(Equation 1)
Project
Budget
Factor
5
Actual Total
Project Cost
Initial Predicted
Project Cost 1
Approved
Changes
(Equation 2)
Using these two indicators, Thomas
et al. (2002) conducted a survey on
617 U.S. domestic and international
traditional construction projects to
investigate the impacts of two deliv-
ery systems—design-build (DB) and
design-bid-build (DBB)—on project
cost performance. The results showed
that the project cost growths for DB
and DBB projects were 20.041 and
20.030, respectively, from the owners’
perspective; the project cost growths
for DB and DBB projects were 0.038
and 0.056, respectively, from the
contractors’ perspective. The results
indicated that the cost performance
of the U.S. traditional construction
projects was below or slightly above
budget. The project budget factor for
DB and DBB projects were 0.966 and
0.948, respectively, from the contrac-
tors’ perspective, indicating that the
changes generally contributed to a 3%
to 5% cost increase. Shrestha, Burns,
and Shields (2013) also conducted a
survey to investigate the magnitude of
construction cost and schedule over-
run in public projects in the United
States. The results showed that the
mean construction cost and schedule
overrun for the 363 sample projects
were 2.95% and 1.54%, respectively.
In addition, Xiao and Proverbs
(2002) compared the levels of contractor cost performance in three countries: Japan, the United Kingdom, and
the United States. The survey results
showed that the estimated percentage of total budget overrun against
the original contract price was 5%.
The percentages of budget overrun for
Japan, the United Kingdom, and the
United States were 3.63%, 5.89%, and
5.05%, respectively. The total number
of design variations, which have been
identified as one of the major contributing factors for budget overruns,
was 54. 55. Using project cost growth,
Chen, Zhang, and Zhang (2014) investigated the impacts of different types
of owner–contractor conflict on cost
performance in Chinese construction
projects. In light of the above, this
study used the project cost growth to
investigate the cost performance of
green building projects in Singapore.
This study did not use the project budget factor because valuing changes/
variations is, practically speaking, very
challenging for respondents.
Methodology and Data Presentation
The questionnaire survey technique
was adopted in this study because
it is a systematic method of collecting data and has been widely used to
collect professional views in sustainable
