Sustainability Interventions of Construction Project Managers—Establishing a Minimum Baseline
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In general, the follow of the paper and the presentation of its section are not prepared following scientific basis. You can follow the prior works to improve and prepare tour paper. Here, are some comments.
1. The methodology is not clear in the abstract.
2. Please describe what is meant by intervention in the introduction and its relation to the study, and how it affect or contribute to sustainability management.
3. The gap that the study will address is not clear in the introduction. Accordingly, the aims and contributions are not clearly presented.
4. The outline of the sections of the paper must be presented in the introduction.
5. The literature review section is not regular. This section lists some definitions and practices. The contributions and gaps of previous works in view of the scope of the study has not been listed.
6. The validity and reliability of the questionnaire are not mentioned.
7. The Likert-scale is not explained.
8. The sampling strategies are not supported by literature.
9. Considering one year of experience is too small to consider the expert.
10. The validity and reliability of the data are not mentioned.
11. The sufficiency of the response rate is not discussed.
12. Define the number of the experts in Table 3 and discus their data in more details.
13. Results: what is the purpose of Section 4.2.
14. The results and discussion must be in separated sections.
15. Figure 1 has been presented suddenly without any refer in the methodology.
16. Conclusion. This section and its subsections are tool long. They must be separated.
17. The implications are not listed.
18. As a suggestion, you can benefit from the works of Akal, Ahmed Yousry; El-Kholy, Amr; Farouk, Ahmed; Reza, Saeed for outlining your paper.
Moderate
Author Response
In general, the follow of the paper and the presentation of its section are not prepared following scientific basis. You can follow the prior works to improve and prepare tour paper. Here, are some comments.
- The methodology is not clear in the abstract.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: Thank you, this is now clarified. Lines 17-21 were added explaining the research method.
- Please describe what is meant by intervention in the introduction and its relation to the study, and how it affect or contribute to sustainability management.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: Thank you, this is now clarified in the introduction line 57.
- The gap that the study will address is not clear in the introduction. Accordingly, the aims and contributions are not clearly presented.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: Thank you, this is now clarified more in the introduction.
- The outline of the sections of the paper must be presented in the introduction.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: Thank you, an outline of the remainder of the paper is added at the end of the introduction.
- The literature review section is not regular. This section lists some definitions and practices. The contributions and gaps of previous works in view of the scope of the study has not been listed.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: Thank you, we have reworked the literature section in order to make it more balanced and in line with the problem the study is addressing.
- The validity and reliability of the questionnaire are not mentioned.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: This is now addressed in lines 270-290.
- The Likert-scale is not explained.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: this is now addressed in lines 196-206
- The sampling strategies are not supported by literature.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: This is now addressed in lines 215-233.
- Considering one year of experience is too small to consider the expert.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: As explained in line 214, this one year criteria is not for considering the PMs as expert but it is for good understanding of the interventions and their effectiveness or easiness. Based on this criteria 3 responds were removed from study as they had less than 1 year experience.
- The validity and reliability of the data are not mentioned.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: This is added in lines: 271-290.
- The sufficiency of the response rate is not discussed.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: The impact of the sample size is indicated in lines 230-232. In the discussion of the demographics of the sample, we also reflect on how representative the sample was.
- Define the number of the experts in Table 3 and discus their data in more details.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: This is added in frequency column in Table 2 (since the table 2 in literature part removed , table 3 is renamed as table 2)
- Results: what is the purpose of Section 4.2.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: the purpose is to analyse the responses in the scatterplot and integrate the easiness and effectiveness perspective (axis : X= easiness and Y= effectiveness). This was used to divide the responses rate for the ranking of easiness and effectiveness of the interventions to 4 groups based on the quadrants and find the most easy and most effective or not easy and not effective ones.
- The results and discussion must be in separated sections.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: The authors feel that both a 5-chapter structure (with the discussion as sub-paragraph of the findings) and a 6-chapter structure (with the discussion as a separate paragraph) are accepted standards. Nevertheless, we have now styled the discussion as a separate paragraph (paragraph 5).
- Figure 1 has been presented suddenly without any refer in the methodology.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: it is now addressed in lines 340-350 and 57-260
- This section and its subsections are tool long. They must be separated.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: it is rearranged .
- The implications are not listed.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: These are addressed in the results and conclusions sections.
- As a suggestion, you can benefit from the works of Akal, Ahmed Yousry; El-Kholy, Amr; Farouk, Ahmed; Reza, Saeed for outlining your paper.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: Thank you
Reviewer 2 Report
A significant number of publications are devoted to sustainable development issues. However, aspects of sustainable project management are not fully disclosed. This substantiates the relevance of the article submitted for review.
The structure of the article is consistent. Questions are fully disclosed. In general, the article can be recommended for publication.
However, some minor adjustments need to be made.
1. It is necessary to fill in the data about the authors in the text of the article.
2. Line 50 The source of literature is not clearly indicated, perhaps authors mean number 17?
3. Line 115 – the same
4. Line 116 missing punctuation mark
Author Response
A significant number of publications are devoted to sustainable development issues. However, aspects of sustainable project management are not fully disclosed. This substantiates the relevance of the article submitted for review.
The structure of the article is consistent. Questions are fully disclosed. In general, the article can be recommended for publication.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: Thank you.
However, some minor adjustments need to be made.
- It is necessary to fill in the data about the authors in the text of the article.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: We’re not sure what you are referring to.
- Line 50 The source of literature is not clearly indicated, perhaps authors mean number 17?
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: If we understand you correctly, you are referring to the reference [16:1]. This indicates page 1 of reference 16. As far as we understand this is the correct formatting, but if there is an issue there, we’re sure that the final edit will correct this.
- Line 115 – the same
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: Thank you, this is a small mistake that has been corrected.
- Line 116 missing punctuation mark
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: Thank you, corrected.
Reviewer 3 Report
From my point of view, the authors have carried out research about an interesting issue. However, in my opinion, this text is not acceptable to be published yet due to the following issues regarding its contents and structure.
In general, this manuscript lacks the appropriate contents and format of a research paper. It lacks the direct, clear and straight to the point way of presenting the information. This would shorten this article length and ease its understanding. To put more specific examples, the text lacks explaining and justifying crucial decisions in the research process while, on the other hand, some parts of the manuscript present in too much detail parts from former references.
- Examples of lacks of explanation: a) the method and design need further explanations in 3.1. in terms of justification – why this method was used instead of others, what are the advantages and limitations…-, format – later seems that it was online but explicit and justified explanations are missing, also clarity about exactly which tools and why, b) the use of TAM.
- Examples of unnecessary integral reproductions of former projects: lines 67-69, line 79, most table 1, lines 119-124, etc.
The use of references has room for improvement. This present version of the manuscript uses a lot of references, many of them really old to refer to present issues (today’s trends rely on references from 2016, reviews from 2014, etc). Old references should be changed for more recent when possible. Moreover, the introduction and review use references to back really strong statements, reminding of a conclusions section.
The gap, the contribution, the novelty of this research project should be better presented. The abstract gives too high expectations in lines 11-13. The introduction should try to better clarify the gap and the conclusions better clarify the contribution. From my point of view, in this version, it is too ambiguous.
There are also problems regarding this manuscript structure. The introduction lacks ending with a clear explanation of the article main structure referring to the article sections, subsections, parts… The last paragraph of section 2.4 is not part of the literature review and requires relocation. This article is quite long and potential readers will easily get lost. A better explanation of the research framework containing a diagram explaining the research parts and subparts in section 3 will ease this article understanding (and better if the framework is connected to the following sections and subsections in section 4 and beyond. Section 4, 4.1 and following subsections, starting in page 9, are including discussion in addition to presenting the results. Therefore, improvements are required such as changing the section name for results & discussion or moving the discussion part to a new discussion section. The conclusions also lack a more direct style to present this research main contribution, novelty, findings, limitations and future works. Conclusions lack avoiding being a second abstract of the article in several parts.
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A detailed spelling and English language revision is required, p.e. “want to attached” in line 575, etc.
Author Response
From my point of view, the authors have carried out research about an interesting issue.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: Thank you!
However, in my opinion, this text is not acceptable to be published yet due to the following issues regarding its contents and structure.
In general, this manuscript lacks the appropriate contents and format of a research paper. It lacks the direct, clear and straight to the point way of presenting the information. This would shorten this article length and ease its understanding. To put more specific examples, the text lacks explaining and justifying crucial decisions in the research process while, on the other hand, some parts of the manuscript present in too much detail parts from former references.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: We hope that the improved manuscript can satisfy you.
- Examples of lacks of explanation: a) the method and design need further explanations in 3.1. in terms of justification – why this method was used instead of others, what are the advantages and limitations…-, format – later seems that it was online but explicit and justified explanations are missing, also clarity about exactly which tools and why,
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: section 3.1 is revised. Why this method was use, what are the Advantages and limitation: lines 183-187 are added. Clarity about which tools and why: section 3.3
- b) the use of TAM.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: The use of TAM is mentioned in section 3.1. The authors feel that a deeper explanation of TAM is beyond the purpose of this paper.
- Examples of unnecessary integral reproductions of former projects: lines 67-69, line 79, most table 1, lines 119-124, etc.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: Thank you. We have removed table 1 and made the other sections that you indicate more compact, although we feel that the definition of SPM should be included in the paper..
The use of references has room for improvement. This present version of the manuscript uses a lot of references, many of them really old to refer to present issues (today’s trends rely on references from 2016, reviews from 2014, etc). Old references should be changed for more recent when possible. Moreover, the introduction and review use references to back really strong statements, reminding of a conclusions section.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: It is improved and old ones are removed as much as possible.
The gap, the contribution, the novelty of this research project should be better presented. The abstract gives too high expectations in lines 11-13. The introduction should try to better clarify the gap and the conclusions better clarify the contribution. From my point of view, in this version, it is too ambiguous.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: Thank you, this is now clarified more in the introduction.
There are also problems regarding this manuscript structure. The introduction lacks ending with a clear explanation of the article main structure referring to the article sections, subsections, parts…
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: Thank you, an outline of the remainder of the paper is added at the end of the introduction.
The last paragraph of section 2.4 is not part of the literature review and requires relocation.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: The table of potential interventions presented in this section is derived from literature. We feel that therefore it should be best placed at the ‘conclusion’ of the literature paragraph.
This article is quite long and potential readers will easily get lost. A better explanation of the research framework containing a diagram explaining the research parts and subparts in section 3 will ease this article understanding (and better if the framework is connected to the following sections and subsections in section 4 and beyond. Section 4, 4.1 and following subsections, starting in page 9, are including discussion in addition to presenting the results. Therefore, improvements are required such as changing the section name for results & discussion or moving the discussion part to a new discussion section. The conclusions also lack a more direct style to present this research main contribution, novelty, findings, limitations and future works. Conclusions lack avoiding being a second abstract of the article in several parts.
AUTHOR’s RESPONSE: Sections names are changed to 4-Findings and 5-Discussion, research flow is explained in lines: 67-71
Comments on the Quality of English Language
A detailed spelling and English language revision is required, p.e. “want to attached” in line 575, etc
AUTHORS: That line is corrected and the overall English is revised.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper has been improved. However, the following comments must be addressed.
1. The language is very poor needs more review and improvements.
2. The gap that the study will address is still not clear in the introduction.
3. The literature review section is not regular. This section lists some definitions and practices. I prefer the 4 section of the literature review to be merged and focused on the contributions and gaps of previous works in view of the scope of the current study.
4. Considering one year of experience is too small to consider the expert, particularly without justifications or supporting literature.
5. The questionnaire has not been piloted to examine its validity and reliability.
6. The authors listed in 3.4 both "Validity and reliability of data and questionnaire". Any methodology should include at first, designing the questionnaire, piloting the questionnaire, examining validity and reliability of questionnaire, population and sampling, surveying the questionnaire, and examining validity and reliability of collected data.
7. Why 3.0 and 3.7 have been selected to draw the scatter diagram. What is your justifications and supporting literature? This is an important point to be illustrated.
8. "The following sections discuss the four quadrants of interventions". From this sentence and until the end of section 4.2, a popper sub-heading must be added. This is a major finding of the study. Further, it appears suddenly in the paper without any mention in the abstract, introduction, and methodology.
9. You listed that the implications have been mentioned in the results and conclusion section. However, this is not appear in the study at all.
10. The conclusion section must be reduced without introduction. This is not a Thesis.
The language is very poor needs more review and improvements.
Author Response
The paper has been improved. However, the following comments must be addressed.
- The language is very poor needs more review and improvements.
AUTHORS: We have had the article proofread and improved the language where necessary. If you have specific recommendations on the language, please provide these.
- The gap that the study will address is still not clear in the introduction.
AUTHORS: This is now addressed in introduction part. The authors consider this study as a practical research, although 42 sustainability interventions for the project managers are outlined in existing literature, but we wanted to evaluate and introduce the most easy and effective ones. if a project manager wants to just implement some of them, which ones are the most effective and easy to implement. So, making easy interventions but achieving more sustainability results.
- The literature review section is not regular. This section lists some definitions and practices. I prefer the 4 section of the literature review to be merged and focused on the contributions and gaps of previous works in view of the scope of the current study.
AUTHORS: The literature review section is restructured and improved.
- Considering one year of experience is too small to consider the expert, particularly without justifications or supporting literature.
AUTHORS: This criteria is set for the project managers to have “Good Understanding” of the interventions and more realistic responds on the easiness and effectiveness of them. This is a minimum requirement to accept the responds because we need the perspective of all project managers and not specifically the very expert ones. Authors believe that this minimum one year requirement is necessary for the project managers because:
- Knowledge acquisition: Project managers have the chance to have a firm grounding in sustainability in project management over the course of a year. They can get familiar with sustainable ideas, methods, and frameworks pertinent to their industry through training programs, seminars, workshops, and hands-on experience.
- Exposure to sustainability issues: After working on a project for at least a year, project managers have the opportunity to experience a variety of sustainability issues. They get first-hand knowledge of how to recognize, address, and incorporate sustainability factors into project design, execution, and assessment. They have a greater awareness of the complexities involved in sustainable project management because of this experience.
- Engagement with stakeholders: Managing sustainability in projects frequently entails interaction with a wide variety of stakeholders, including as customers, vendors, government agencies, and local residents. Project managers have enough opportunity to work with and interact with these stakeholders throughout this 1 year of experience to get an understanding of their sustainability expectations and needs and difficulties with engaging them. At least they can have an idea.
- Application of sustainability practices: Project managers may use sustainability practices in actual projects by gaining practical experience. They gain the capacity to make judgments pertaining to sustainability, such as choosing environmentally friendly products, maintaining resource efficiency, reducing environmental consequences, and promoting social responsibility. Their comprehension of how sustainability concepts translate into useful project management techniques is deepened by this actual implementation.
5. The questionnaire has not been piloted to examine its validity and reliability.
AUTHORS: This is now addressed at the end of the section 3: research design. We implemented this step by a pilot study including 3 experts: 2 male project managers, and 1 female project manager (from Netherlands, Iran and Malaysia)
6. The authors listed in 3.4 both "Validity and reliability of data and questionnaire". Any methodology should include at first, designing the questionnaire, piloting the questionnaire, examining validity and reliability of questionnaire, population and sampling, surveying the questionnaire, and examining validity and reliability of collected data.
AUTHORS: The validity and reliability of the questionnaire is addressed by indicating the pilot study at the end of the research design. The validity and reliability of data, is addressed by the preliminary analysis, (with a reference) on the 5% trimmed mean method and that there were no missing values (all the questions were mandatory to answer and answering one question was pre-requisite to the other one) and no suspicious responses.
7. Why 3.0 and 3.7 have been selected to draw the scatter diagram. What is your justifications and supporting literature? This is an important point to be illustrated.
AUTHORS: We understand your question. This is explained in line 318-319. The lines represent the means of the effectiveness and easiness scores. We think that is an acceptable way of defining the quadrants.
- "The following sections discuss the four quadrants of interventions". From this sentence and until the end of section 4.2, a popper sub-heading must be added. This is a major finding of the study. Further, it appears suddenly in the paper without any mention in the abstract, introduction, and methodology.
AUTHORS: Section 4.3 is now dedicated to : “exploring the scatterplot: Analyzing easiness and effectiveness across all quadrants” and the four parts are also mentioned in sub-heading sections. It is also addressed in methodology part as well.
- You listed that the implications have been mentioned in the results and conclusion section. However, this is not appear in the study at all.
AUTHORS: Implications were in the discussion and minimum baseline part, which are now removed partly from that sections and presented separately in section 6 as Implications.
- The conclusion section must be reduced without introduction. This is not a Thesis.
AUTHORS: It is reduced now, the introduction part is removed and we tried to be more concise and to the point.
Reviewer 3 Report
From my point of view, the authors have carried out research about an interesting issue. This version of the article has improved significantly compared to the previous version. However, in my opinion, this text is not acceptable to be published yet due to the following minor issues:
The use of references still has room for improvement. References from 2016 cannot support a statement about “today’s trends”, so if the authors cannot find more recent references they should adequate the manuscript, for example “the last decade trends”.
A better explanation of the research framework containing a diagram explaining the research parts and subparts in section 3 will ease this article understanding (and better if the framework is connected to the following sections and subsections in section 4 and beyond).
Author Response
The use of references still has room for improvement. References from 2016 cannot support a statement about “today’s trends”, so if the authors cannot find more recent references they should adequate the manuscript, for example “the last decade trends”.
AUTHORS: The references are improved. Only 3 references are related to before 2017.
A better explanation of the research framework containing a diagram explaining the research parts and subparts in section 3 will ease this article understanding (and better if the framework is connected to the following sections and subsections in section 4 and beyond).
AUTHORS: Thank you! This is added to the introduction.
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper has been improved. However, the following comments must be addressed.
1. There is no need for Figure 1 in the introduction.
2. The response rate may be small; thus, it must be justified from the prior literature.
3. Considering one year of experience is too small to consider the expert. This must be supported from literature.
4. Why 3.0 and 3.7 have been selected to draw the scatter diagram. What are your justifications to consider these scores? Why?
5. Some paragraphs have 2 or 3, 4 sentences. Please merge these with the prior or the next ones.
Can be improved
Author Response
The paper has been improved. However, the following comments must be addressed.
AUTHORS: Thank you!
1. There is no need for Figure 1 in the introduction.
AUTHORS: Frankly, we agree with you. The Figure was included on request of one of the other reviewers, in order to clarify the research process. We do not have an issue with removing it here, which we did in the last revision.
2. The response rate may be small; thus, it must be justified from the prior literature.
AUTHORS: Academic practice in determining a desired sample size, usually base the targeted sample size on a 95% confidence level and a 5% margin of error. In lines 208-209 of the manuscript this is also described. When the actual sample of a study is less than the targeted sample, it is good practice to be transparent about this and to show what the effect of the actual sample is on the margin of error, while sticking to the confidence level. Lines 210-211 show this.
In addition to this the impact of the actual sample size on the statistical analysis procedures should be considered. For example multiple regression, analysis of covariance, or loglinear analysis, need a “good size sample, e.g., 200-500” (Israel, 1992). However, “If descriptive statistics are to be used, e.g., mean, frequencies, then nearly any sample size will suffice.” (Israel, 1992). And as our study is doing exactly the latter, the sample size of just above a 100 suffices. In fact, similar response numbers were used in the following studies published in this journal:
- Marnewick, C. Silvius, G. and Schipper, R. (2019), Exploring Patterns of Sustainability Stimuli of Project Managers, Sustainability, 11, 5016
- Sluijs, R. van der, and Silvius, G. (2023) Exploring the Values of a Sustainable Project Manager, Sustainability, 15, 8006.
Reference: Israel, G.D. (1992), Determining Sample Size, Fact Sheet PEOD-6, University of Florida. available at: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pd006
3. Considering one year of experience is too small to consider the expert. This must be supported from literature.
AUTHORS: Last time we have responded extensively why we think the one year experience requirement is sufficient. The repetition of your earlier comment does not clarify what issue you still see and/or why you reject our earlier response.
In addition to our earlier response, we would like to emphasize that our study is not an expert study. The RQ of our study was formulated as What are the most effective and easy interventions that a manager of a construction projects can make, in order to improve the sustainability of his/her project?. The target respondent group for the study is defined as project managers of construction projects with a minimum one year experience (line 193-194). We do not refer to an expert view, but to the view of managers of construction projects. For this, a single year of experience is adequate.
A similar experience requirement was used in:
Sluijs, R. van der, and Silvius, G. (2023) Exploring the Values of a Sustainable Project Manager, Sustainability, 15, 8006.
4. Why 3.0 and 3.7 have been selected to draw the scatter diagram. What are your justifications to consider these scores? Why?
AUTHORS: We have explained this in our last response to your comments. The justification is that the lines represent the means of the effectiveness and easiness scores, which is the most logical way to draw a line in a cloud of scores. This is explained in line 318-319 of the manuscript. If this explanation is not to your satisfaction, we ask you to explain more clearly the issue you see.
5. Some paragraphs have 2 or 3, 4 sentences. Please merge these with the prior or the next ones.
AUTHORS: We have have checked the manuscript for this and followed your advice where we thought it made sense.
