Overcoming sustainability barriers in facilities management by a project management framework for project governance

Abstract

The world needs to transform in sustainable ways, in large part due to the environmental hazards caused by and negative effects of the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry. The AEC industry, including facilities management (FM), is a key stakeholder in sustainability issues and responsible for a large part (40% on average) of climate gas emissions. This concern has led to growing interest among academics and practitioners in the AEC and FM fields in the topic of sustainability. Nevertheless, many barriers to applying sustainability principles in practice remain, rendering their application difficult in fields such as project management (PM), where it has moved from the fringes toward the centre of traditional practice. This paper aims to explore a theoretical PM framework to analyse barriers to sustainability encountered in organisations with direct applications to the AEC and FM sectors through the perspective of project governance. Our findings derive from a literature review (97 articles published between 2003 and 2021) categorising types of barriers related to sustainability implementation and grouping their components. The study showcases the main factors hampering organisations in the incorporation of sustainability principles and how these can be overcome to move toward sustainable development. A total of seven categories of barriers to sustainability resulted from the study; here, we analyse two categories in detail.