INTEGRATION OF WATER-EFFICIENT STRATEGIES IN GREEN CONSTRUCTION PROJECT MANAGEMENT IN PAKISTAN: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

Abstract

The evidence reviewed suggests that strategies that result in water efficiency can lead to potable water savings of approximately 30-50 per cent and construction-stage, water savings of up to about 30 per cent, when they are well implemented. Integration, on the other hand, happens at the planning and design phase and is diluted during implementation, monitoring and wrap-up. Water-efficiency outcomes were better when project teams reported structured planning, clearly assigned responsibility, and active monitoring, and when project management was weak or informal, adoption of any water-saving technology reported was poor, supporting the hypothesis that project management is a mediator between strategy and outcome. There is a persistent policy–practice gap, which dulls down these results—while the Green Building Code of Pakistan (GBCP-2023), the Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC-2023), and the National Water Conservation Strategy provide clear requirements, poor implementation, inadequate managerial capacity and lack of measurable water targets in scope and procurement documents inhibit these at the project level. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first review of water efficiency in green construction, in the context of Pakistan, where the integration of water efficiency in construction projects is conceptualized as a problem for project management and not as a technical one. It provides a framework of conceptual variables (independent, mediating, dependent and moderating) and inter-variable relationships that is proposed and suggested for future empirical testing, and it identifies the management and policy context in which water-efficient strategies are most likely to be implemented.