Authors : A. Amiril, A.H. Nawawi, R. Takim and S.N.F. Ab-Latif
Abstract: Railway system has emerged as one of the essential mode of public transportation in Malaysia. However, unlike buildings, the development of railway infrastructure project requires huge land use, a lot of resources, cost and time which give impact to the economy, environment and social wellbeing. Albeit the integration of sustainability concepts in construction provides wide range of benefits to minimize these impacts, it has not been widely adopted in Malaysia railway projects. Hence, the objective of this study is to seek the main barriers in integrating sustainability concept in Malaysia railway projects. A questionnaire-based survey was conducted among the railway project key players: the client, consultants and contractors. The data were analyzed using Relative Importance Index (RII) to rank the barriers according to their influences. The finding suggests that government roles are important in encouraging the implementation of sustainable concept in Malaysia railway project through the legislation enforcement and incentive instruments. Other barriers such as lack of training and education, financial constraint, lack of political will, monitoring and enforcement, poor knowledge about sustainability management, lack of awareness and lack of ‘green’ materials availability was also perceived as major barriers towards sustainable construction implementation. It is anticipated that the findings reported in this study could be important as a guidelines for improving the railway infrastructure projects performance towards building a sustainable future development.
A. Amiril, A.H. Nawawi, R. Takim and S.N.F. Ab-Latif, 2017. The Barriers to Sustainable Railway Infrastructure Projects in Malaysia. The Social Sciences, 12: 769-775.