Sustainability is emerging as a guiding paradigm to create a new kind of built environment: one that meets the needs of humans in the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. However, despite legislative and social pressures to increase the environmental and resource-friendliness of our built environment, many construction organizations continue to operate in a "business-as- usual" fashion, failing to realize the potential advantages of taking a proactive approach to sustainability. To incorporate sustainability as a guiding principle, the construction industry needs both a convincing reason and a strategy to do so. This paper presents a model for organizationalchange to increase the sustainability of the built environment. The model includes a breakdown of the reasons that propel decision makers to consider sustainability in the context of built facilities, and identifies key strategic entry points for incorporating sustainability as a decision criterion over the whole life cycle of built facilities. In terms of the problem solving process used by built environment stakeholders, the model provides an overview of considerations for sustainability in terms of the life cycle of built facilities. The paper concludes with recommendations for creating execution plans to meet sustainability objectives and goals, and guidelines for surmounting barriers to change in the Architectural/Engineering/Construction (A/E/C) industry.
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Vanegas et al. (2000) studied this question.