A structured critical success factors model for the implementation of green retrofit projects

Abstract

Existing buildings contribute to half of all annual energy and greenhouse gas emissions. Green retrofit has been the latest value added service under the facility management field to mitigate climate change caused by greenhouse gas emission. Yet, green retrofit implementation is not widely practiced by existing building stakeholders due to lack of participation and cooperation among them. Among the issues of green retrofit are high upfront costs and uncertain return, lack of green building professionals, lack of financial incentives, knowledge gap in green development quantification, lack of green awareness, lack of communication among the stakeholders, lack of internal leadership and lack of green materials and technology. These factors contribute to the failure of green retrofit projects’ implementation. Thus, the aim of this research is to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) of green retrofit projects’ implementation. The specific objectives of this research are: to identify the CSFs of green retrofit; to evaluate the criticality and ranking of CSFs of green retrofit; and to develop structural model for the CSFs of green retrofit. The research methodology adopted to achieve the aim of this research is quantitative method using a survey based approach consisting of three steps namely literature review, experts’ opinions and questionnaire survey. Based on literature review, eight CSFs with thirty three indicators of green retrofit implementation were identified. Experts’ opinions were sought to validate the identified CSFs and to develop relationships among the CSFs using an Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM). Questionnaire survey was conducted to empirically confirm the ISM-Based Model using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). The final model consists of eight CSFs with twenty seven indicators with CSF 1 (green building professionals) and CSF 5 (internal leadership) being the major drivers for the success of the green retrofit projects implementation.