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Introduction
The construction industry has a significant influence on the economy. As Medineckiene et al. (2010) pointed out construction activities contribute considerably to the progression of national economy and society as real estate development is necessary for people to live, work and satisfy their social and other needs. However, in addition to the positive impacts on the economy, the construction activities also generate negative externalities as they are key sources of global environmental pollution and ecological damage.
Currently, the environmental degradation caused by the construction sector has become a global concern. Murray and Cotgrave (2007) emphasized that a paradigm shift to sustainable development is needed in order to effectively slow down the damage to the environment. Cotgrave and Kokkarinen (2010) also highlighted that, if environmental friendly practices were applied to the construction activities as well as the building designs, there would be high possibility for the environmental degradation to be slowed down significantly.
However, it is not easy to implement sustainable development without appropriate skills and knowledge. In order to effectively deliver the sustainable development, it is of great importance to have sustainability literate workforce working in the industry. As mentioned by Thomas and Nicita (2002), the growing recognition of sustainable development has increased the need for a sustainability literate workforce in order to advance understanding on green construction practices and knowledge of what it takes to execute that kind of development.
To equip the workforce with sufficient sustainability knowledge, providing a sustainability education to undergraduate construction students is the key in making changes towards greener practices as those graduates will be the construction professionals of the future (Cotgrave and Kokkarinen, 2010). However, Murray and Cotgrave (2007) found that students of quantity surveying (QS), equivalent to cost engineering in the USA, have the least exposure to sustainability education compared to other construction students, for example in the disciplines of civil engineering and architecture. There appears to be an opportunity to address the lack of sustainable literacy amongst QS students given that the role of the QS pervades all stages in the life-cycle of construction projects (Ekundayo et al. , 2011; Tan et al. , 2016). For example, QS professionals are responsible for the provision of expert advice on capital construction costs and whole-life costs....