Identifying Critical Sustainability Criteria and Indicators for Australian Highway Infrastructure Projects

Incorporating sustainability principles in construction works is both critical and beneficial. However, the lack of common understanding on what constitutes sustainability in real-life projects causes difficulty to push sustainability agenda forward. As a result, sustainability deliverables are not tangible at the project level or simply neglected. Under such circumstance, policies on sustainability remain largely ideological and are often not realized to its full potentials. To move forward, sustainability criteria and indicators are to be agreed upon among the industry professionals. This paper discusses the preliminary findings of Delphi study, an integral part of a QUT research, aimed at identifying critical sustainability criteria and indicators for Australian highway infrastructure projects. It paves the way for further identification of solutions for each critical indicator at a subsequent stage. It is expected that integrated decision-making guidelines on sustainability for Australian road infrastructure projects will be developed at the end of the research.