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Introduction
The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) defined sustainable development (SD) as being the achievement of a better quality of life through the efficient use of resources, which realises continued social progress while maintaining stable economic growth and caring for the environment ([21] OGC, 2007). The UK government wishes to see all housing associations (HAs) integrate sustainability into their procurement and development approaches in terms of considering the EcoHomes ranting system, which is an Environmental Assessment Method for Housing, as an accepted way to evaluate the sustainability of housing projects in the UK.
The generation of reliable early stage building project price forecasts is central to clients being able to make value for money business decisions. At this initial stage of a project, the construction process is unpredictable and inherently risky. [14] Fortune and Cox (2005) confirmed the continued overwhelming use of the traditional single point deterministic models to form early stage project price forecasts. That survey found that the newer models such as, artificial neural nets, fuzzy logic nets, and environmental or sustainable cost models were not in widespread use. The research of [2] BRE (2001) and [13] Elhag and Boussabaine (2001) explained that the significance of the consideration of sustainability early in a potential project's life cycle was likely to result in less of an increase in capital costs as compared to those projects in which sustainability issues were considered at a later stage. This previous work made the case that there is a clear need to develop a more reliable early stage building project price forecasting model for sustainable housing projects in the UK.
The literature reviewed in the first part of the paper examines the principles of sustainable construction practice and the processes involved in the formulation of pre-construction project price forecasting. The paper then identifies the appropriate research design, and the design and administration of the survey. The main questions in the survey and the results of data analysis are explained and the main findings discussed. The paper ends with recommendations for academe and practice so as to ensure emergent theory translates into general practice.
Literature review
Sustainability and its evaluation
Sustainable construction is defined as a construction process that incorporates the basic themes of sustainable development ([23]...