Evaluating Risk Factors in Green Building: The Case of Sustainable Construction in Vietnam

Green Buildings (GB) have been developing in line with the sustainability trend over the world. However, GB projects frequently face more risks than traditional projects because of adopting innovative sustainability technologies. Consequently, risk management in GB projects is more complicated and necessary than conventional projects. A systematic literature review was conducted by analyzing 64 relevant studies from 2006 to 2020. The results revealed that GB risk is somewhat a nascent but growing topic and almost limited to several developed economies such as Singapore, the US, Australia, and China. There are very few GB risk studies in developing countries. Thus, this thesis aimed to investigate GB risks in Vietnam-a typical developing country in Asia. In the first step, this research identified 53 risk factors that GB projects frequently confront based on a comprehensive literature review and interviewing GB experts. A survey of 207 construction professionals was then conducted to assess and validate these GB risk factors. The result provided a list of GB risks classified and evaluated according to GB projects' life-cycle, and thus may serve as a helpful reference guide within the construction sector. The next step explored the relationship between participants' characteristics and risk assessment (RA). Notably, the ANOVA analysis revealed that RA negatively correlates with participants' GB experience, while their industry experience does not affect RA. This implies the essential role of professionals with rich GB experience in risk management in GB projects. Furthermore, the hierarchical regression analysis proved that participant roles do not moderate the relationship between GB experience and RA. Also, the results revealed no significant differences in risk perspectives among various project roles. After that, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was conducted to examine risk structure and latent risk components. The results exposed the most critical 30 risk factors loaded under six risk components: (1) Human resource and technical risk in the construction phase; (2) Performance risk in the operation phase; (3) Human resource risk in the design phase; (4) Financial risk; (5) Regulation and complexity risk; and (6) Material risk. Finally, this study developed a risk assessment model based on the result of EFA analysis. This model adopted the fuzzy synthetic evaluation method to assess GB risks. Notably, this model considered the three most crucial risk features: impact level, occurrence probability, and manageability. To validate the model effectiveness, the second questionnaire survey of 58 GB professionals was conducted in Vietnam. Based on the experts’ assessments, the proposed model was applied to determine the significance of risk factors, risk groups, and the overall risk in GB projects. The findings exposed that GB risks are relatively high, implying risk management is essential for developing GB projects in Vietnam. The results indicated that "lack experience of GB designers" was the most critical factor while "human resources risk in the design phase" was the top crucial risk group. This result provided detailed GB risk evaluations, thus becoming a helpful reference guide for construction practitioners. Additionally, this study contributed a reliable and practical model to help practitioners manage risks in GB projects.