Towards Advanced Solutions for Achieving Sustainability Goals in Buildings: Lessons Learned from Case Studies

Sustainable building projects deal with a multitude of technical, environmental, economic, social, organizational, and innovation-related issues, to name but a few. Achieving sustainability goals depends on how well these issues are handled. While some sustainable building projects are quite successful, some are not. It is therefore important to learn lessons from past projects. This research aims to reveal the key lessons concerning sustainability-related issues in building projects. To that end, challenges in the achievement of sustainability goals of building projects are discussed, and lessons learned systems are examined. After that, the events experienced by project managers in a large number of sustainable building projects are obtained from a major public agency's website and are analyzed. The findings show the key lessons that have an important impact on the success/failure of sustainable building projects. The expected contribution of the study is to foster advanced solutions for future sustainable projects.