Impacts of skilled workers on sustainable construction practices

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the significant impacts of skilled workers towards achieving sustainable construction practices. The objectives of the study include identifying sustainable construction practices and evaluate the degree of agreement to which skilled workers influence sustainable construction practices from construction professionals‘ views. A sample of 576 construction professionals were randomly selected from the list of registered construction professionals‘ organisations, out of which 290 responses were received. Data analysis include Relative Importance Index (RII) for ranking comparison among the construction professionals on a scale range from 1-5. Kendall‘s coefficient of concordance was used to evaluate the degree of agreement between construction professionals related to the ranking of each group of the practices. The results of RII revealed that improve project delivery, value for money, improve work quality, reduction of wastages of construction materials, better use of local materials to reduce carbon emission and minimisation of resources consumption are the top five impacts of skilled workers towards sustainable construction. The results of Kendall‘s coefficient of concordance revealed that a high agreement between construction professionals occurred in the ranking of the impacts of skilled workers related to each group of the practices. The findings revealed that the most significant impacts of skilled workers arise from improvement on organisational performance and environmental efficiency. It was recommended that efforts should be geared towards the supply of skilled workers for improved sustainable construction practices.