Frameworks for Integrating Sustainable Development Principles in Construction: A Systematic Literature Review

The construction industry is considered as one of the least sustainable sectors despite increasing pressures and efforts to integrate sustainable development principles into the industry’s practices. This study systematically reviews 36 articles to categorize and analyse frameworks for implementing Sustainable Construction (SC), with emphasis on critical SC indicators, barriers, and enabling drivers towards synthesizing best practices and identifying research gaps to guide sound implementation strategies. Findings reveal a fragmented but maturing field spanning theoretical, holistic, management, dimension-specific and assessment-oriented approaches. The main contribution of the study is the consolidation of 243 extracted indicators into 78 distinct indicators, further synthesized into 18 high-level categories across four pillars of SC: environmental, social, economic, and technological dimensions of sustainable construction. Results show the continued dominance of environmental and economic dimensions, while highlighting the emergence of the technological pillar as an influential sustainability transformation enabler. Key barriers towards SC include high initial costs and weak enforcement, while innovation, long-term savings, and policy support act as major drivers. The study provides a practical foundation for future maturity models and decision-support systems for SC implementation bridging the gap between high-level sustainability principles and actionable implementation strategies, bridging the gap between high-level sustainability principles and actionable implementation strategies.