Communication turns green construction planning into reality

Green planning is critically important during the design phases of construction projects but continually gets less attention during construction. Project owners and planners need to understand how communication influences green implementation. To address a gap in the extant research, this paper presents the evaluation results on how sustainability awareness of field supervision personnel impacts the successful completion of school projects by proving that communicating sustainability goals with them is vital for decision-making during the construction stage of the project. This paper uses data collected from 162 new school construction projects to compare sustainability design goals with their successful incorporation into completed projects. Seventy-one project managers and inspectors were surveyed to assess their awareness of key high-performance sustainability requirements that were built into the designs. The responses from these two groups were compared to examine the positive or negative impacts. The analysis results show that early and continuous communication of sustainability design goals with field supervision personnel has a significant impact on whether those goals are realized when the project is turned over to the owner for occupancy. Successful implementation of sustainability goals not only provides economic benefits from fully exploiting life-cycle costs, but also holds the promise of providing a healthier working environment.