Developing critical success factors for integrating circular economy into modular construction projects in Hong Kong

Abstract

Circular construction practices and business models are considered essential to reduce the profound impact of the construction sector to the widening global circularity gap. However, practitioners and clients in Hong Kong have encountered profound challenges in integrating circular economy principles into modular construction projects. Therefore, this paper investigates the critical success factors for implementing circular modular construction projects. The research process comprised a focused literature review, consultation of subject matter experts, questionnaire survey of industry practitioners, mean score ranking, factor analysis, and fuzzy synthetic evaluation. The analyses revealed twenty-one significant success factors for integrating circular economy principles into modular construction projects in Hong Kong. The top five significant success factors include early design completion and freezing, early understanding and commitment of the client, effective leadership and support of a specialist contractor, adequate knowledge and experience of the project team, and collaborative working and information sharing among project teams. These underscored the significance of the planning and design stages for implementing circular modular construction projects successfully. Further analysis derived three clusters of the significant success factors: effective supply chain management, competence and early commitment, and collaboration and information management, explaining 61.461% of the total variance. A fuzzy synthetic evaluation showed that these three clusters significantly influence the success of circular modular construction projects. The paper provided practical and technical guidance on how to implement circular modular construction projects effectively. Therefore, this paper provides some important insights into the critical success factors for integrating circular economy objectives into circular modular construction projects.