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PurposeThe barriers to integrating sustainable practices into construction project management require extensive resource allocations to resolve. Within developing countries such as Iran (where resources are scarce), remedial strategies adopted must prioritise tackling those barriers that can be expected to yield maximum return on investment. The candidate barriers are many, and this paper aims to identify a hierarchy of barriers, providing a priority list of remedial targets.Design/methodology/approachA mixed philosophical stance of interpretivism and post-positivism is adopted within a deductive approach and survey strategy. A list of 30 known barriers are identified from extant literature and used to formulate a questionnaire data collection instrument administered within the Iranian construction industry. Data collected from 176 practitioners are analysed using the relative importance index and Mann–Whitney U test to compare groups based on the participants' demographic variables.FindingsThe findings challenge the common assumption that items related to market and workforce experience are major inhibitors of change. That is, economics and regulatory dependent barriers have a higher impact on the failure of a shift to sustainable practices in Iran. The most influential barriers to incorporating sustainability in construction projects are: (1) lack of understanding of the potential benefits; (2) insufficient cooperation among practitioners, research institutions and environmental organisations; and (3) a lack of a systematic approach to pursuing sustainability goals. No significant associations are detected between the affiliation of the respondents and their attitude towards the issue. Thus, a generalised approach can be applied to a broader range of organisations and construction projects in Iran.Originality/valueWhile studies on sustainability impediments at the firm or project level are ubiquitous within literature, this research identifies that the most significant barriers to sustainable project management in Iran, as an underexplored context, are those experienced at the economic and institutional level. Moreover, this novel research presents important insights into the potential effects of participants' demographic profiles on their view of the importance of identified barriers.

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This paper is an attempt to explore the barriers to integrating sustainability into construction project management in developing countries. To this end, a comprehensive review of the literature is conducted, as a result of which a list of 30 barriers is culled from existing studies. The list of barriers is subsequently assessed in terms of relative importance index (RII) through a survey questionnaire administered to Iranian construction industry experts, resulting in a dataset of 176 completed questionnaires. Findings bring to light the most influential barriers to incorporating sustainability in construction projects for a developing country. These were: (1) lack of understanding of the potential selfbenefits of proactivity and high economic risks that unsustainable practices may carry, (2) inadequate assessment of risks and a silo-based approach, namely, insufficient cooperation among practitioners, research institutions and environmental organisations and (3) the lack of a systematic approach to planning and acting for the fulfilment of sustainability goals. As one of the first studies in its kind, the paper offers invaluable insight for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers, in supporting the transition of construction project management practices towards fulfilling sustainable development goals.

Contracts are means to allocate the scope of work and associated risks to owners and contractors involved. In case of megaprojects, since there are many stakes involved, identifying risk factors of megaprojects and estimating their likelihoods and consequences are entirely vital. Likewise, analyzing how the contract risks are shared between parties and predicting the possibilities of achieving the contract goals are important practices as well. This paper, through an exploratory research, describes a risk analysis procedure and the results of applying probabilistic risk analysis (PRA) techniques on the new Iranian upstream contract framework for a real world gas megaproject. Such a process consists of: (a) gathering and reporting all risk factors affecting construction schedule, cost, IRR, Gross and Net revenue, (b) eliciting and de-biasing expert judgments, (c) building a mathematical model to implement Monte Carlo simulation, (d) providing the Probability Distribution Function (PDF) of project financial parameters. Results of this paper are of interest to practitioners involved in contractual negotiations as well as those who are responsible for developing financial framework of upstream service contracts.