Incorporating sustainable management system into ...

Int. J. Sustainable Development, Vol. 15, No. 3, 2012

Incorporating sustainable management system into housing development practice in Malaysia Soo Cheen Suzanne Khor* School of Housing, Building and Planning, University of Science Malaysia, 11800 Pulau Penang, Malaysia E-mail: [email protected] *Corresponding author

Abu Hassan Bin Abu Bakar School of Housing, Building and Planning, University of Science Malaysia, 11800 Pulau Penang, Malaysia E-mail: [email protected] Abstract: This paper reviews the practice in sustainable management in housing development, which incorporates in Malaysia the urban planning organisation and sustainable housing development variables. The transition of a sustainable housing development is to ward off the constraints faced in the housing sector and to drive through the sustainable loop to undergo the evolution in the new housing era. The primary objective is to achieve the balance of a sustainability triple bottom line at the end of the result. The suggestion made is to use a system tool to manage housing development in Malaysia in a sustainable approach. Keywords: sustainability management system; SMS; urban planning mechanisms; sustainable housing variables; Malaysia. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Khor, S.C.S. and Abu Bakar, A.H.B. (2012) ‘Incorporating sustainable management system into housing development practice in Malaysia’, Int. J. Sustainable Development, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp.277–291. Biographical notes: Soo Cheen Suzanne Khor is a Researcher at the School of Housing, Building and Planning (HBP). Her research specialises in the housing sustainable development towards establish the sustainability index of assessment system. She is involved in characterising complex systems for sustainable development of housing sector, the assessment model’s objective is to measure the sustainability development of Malaysia regional housing schemes. She obtained her MSc in Construction Management from University of Science Malaysia (USM) and she has been involved in the construction industry for several years. Currently, she as a Teaching Assistant in HBP and fulfilling her research study at the same time. Abu Hassan Bin Abu Bakar is an Associate Professor. He is currently teaching project and construction management courses at both undergraduate and graduate level at the School of Housing, Building and Planning (HBP) in University of Science Malaysia (USM). He received his MSc and his PhD from

Copyright © 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

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S.C.S. Khor and A.H.B. Abu Bakar the University of College London, UK. He has been involved in teaching and practicing construction management and other related works since 1980. As an academician, he has also been involved in numerous researches and consultancies in related fields. His areas of interest are construction industry development and technology transfer in construction.

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Introduction

Malaysia is located in South-East Asia just north of the Equator and comprises the Peninsula and Sabah Sarawak on the Borneo Island. It is separated by the South China Sea which known as West and East Malaysia respectively. It consists of 13 states and three federal territories and has a total landmass of 329,847 square kilometres. Malaysia’s population is estimated to be 28,250,500, which makes it the 44th most populated country in the world (Population, 2010). The Malaysian population continues to grow at a rate of 2.4% per annum (Population, Household and Living Quarters, 2010).Based on the survey, the incremental of the population was attuned to the habitat requirements in the cities. This coincides with the statement of United Nations (2003) which stated that more than half of the population live in the cities. However, the population distribution is uneven, with some 20 million of 28 million citizens concentrated in Peninsular Malaysia, which has an area of 131,598 square kilometres (Hassan, 2004). Housing is developing in line with the goals of the Habitat Agenda and the Principles of Agenda 21 (Robinson et al., 1993) which is a blueprint for sustainable development in the 21st century adopted by 179 nations including Malaysia in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992 (Omar and Sanusi, 2005). However, housing development now faces a lot of constraints. The development of housing in various level performances: design, construction, operation and demolition can give significant impact on the environment (Huby, 1998). This coincides with the Tosics (2004) statement that housing constraint can implicate to urban development. The imbalance among the environment, social and economy elements had caused the rise of vicious circle to the human life. It’s the time to transform the housing development into the transition of sustainable development. Choguill (1994) stated the sustainable housing may be understood in terms of ecological sustainability, economic sustainability, technological sustainability, cultural sustainability and social sustainability. The concept of the housing sustainability can be understood with the interpretation in sustainability loop to understand the life cycle of housing development. Based on Kotler et al. (2003), there are three stages of the life cycle, namely the emergent, rational and constrained levels. Unfortunately, it was proven that the housing development nowadays is undergoing the constrained stage of the processes through the literature reviews. The compliance of sustainability management principles in the urban planning mechanisms should be taken since housing development is constituted and administrated by urban planning agencies. The practice of sustainability in housing development comprised the wide spectrum of multidisciplinary approach and its sophisticated situations to understand (Clayton and Radcliffe 1996). The implementation of an open system approach incorporating sustainability policies and regulation is essential in order

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to solve the problem complexity and enable the managing of housing project pragmatically and systematically. Alternatively, the adoption of the new approach is addressed as sustainability management system (SMS). According to Blackburn (2007), the SMS comprised ten multi-steps of the management process to sail through the system in order to achieve the sustainability in the housing development. In this paper, the authors grapple with the questions of how SMS approach can be pragmatically implemented in the urban planning organisation for achieving the goal of housing sustainability development in Malaysia.

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Sustainability management system

Sustainable development is defined by Brundtland Commission (1987) as “The development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Elaborate by Blackburn (2007), the concept of sustainability is perceived as a long term development for countries. The efforts of sustainability practices embrace the rigorous use of the scarce natural resources through a good implementation of economy managerially, but without the negligence of environment and social. The philosophy of sustainability should emphasise the achieving of sustainability that integrates the economic, environmental, and social into performance. The sustainability loop (Kotler et al. 2003) divided into three segments of the phases; these include ‘emergent’, ‘rational’ and ‘constrained’. The adverse impact of rapid development progress had exploited the affluency of natural resources and generated myriad of social problem, yet people still maximise the utilities and profits (Weintraub, 1993). The obvious example can be seen in housing development scenarios, the proliferation of housing has manipulated the market and kept pushing the production of the business. The development has been evolved from emergent stage into the rational. However, the growing population disparities issues led to the excessive exploitation of the natural resources. Human activities that gave the huge impact of global ecology are now threatening the creatures on the earth. The indication of the earth damages such as: soil erosion, deforestation, desertification, species extinctions (Clayton et al., 1996) and the tragedy of death, mishappening and disasters occurrence such as tsunamis, hurricanes, storms, floods and earthquakes have come to be the signals of overwhelmed by human activities. The exploitation of natural resources like fossil fuel and minerals has caused imbalance in demand and supply. The generation of massive wastes threatens the ecological system. Consequently, the world falls in a quandary of constrained stage which incurred the economy recessional, environment damaging and social riotous. At the end, the adverse impact compromise the future generation in the causality of crisis mishap. It is the time to transforming the cycle into sustainable development by moving backward from the constrained stage to the rational of sustainability loop (Kotler et al., 2003). Sustainable housing can drive the continuous loop to undergo the renewal stage of evolution. Advised by Kotler et al. (2003), the adaptation of the change should incorporate three strategic of changes, namely: political, technical and cultural change.

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S.C.S. Khor and A.H.B. Abu Bakar

Those economists observed political issue as the authorisation for mandatory change during the difficulty of transformation. Synchronously, the technical change is needed to implement the new strategy for new policy in order to replace the obsolete technology and the non-renewable resources with renewable resources by using the green techno economic paradigm (Daniels, 2005). However, the most significant part is cultural change of the human behaviour with explained the dynamic support of people will change the country development to move toward the modern age of sustainability (Kotler et al., 2003). Defined by Blackburn (2007), the incorporation of management principles in sustainability system approach can help achieving the task of sustainability. The SMS is defined as “a process of proactive, holistic organizational management purpose of achieving sustainability for both the organization and society” (Blackburn, 2007). The purpose of employing the SMS is to hope to give the guidelines when involve the decision-making on important issues so that all pertinent to sustainability policy is considered. The primary issues should incorporate the basic structure of sustainability in the process of drivers, efficient enablers, pathways and evaluators (Blackburn, 2007). Table 1 illustrates the sustainability operating system process for understanding the playing role of each keyword. Table 1

Sustainability operate system process

Drivers Approach of management sustainability

Efficient enables

Pathway

Evaluators

Organisation integration

Vision, values, policy

Indicators and goals

Source: Blackburn (2007)

The management approach of sustainability operating system adopted in an organisation practice for accomplishing the sustainability policy is being proven drive performancebased experiences (Blackburn, 2007). The integration of organisation is required to practise every step of the management system efficiency in order to achieve the sustainability goals. Synchronously, the employment of the sustainability operating system in project organisation is the strategic way to adapt the change in the transforming cycle. Nonetheless, the use of measurable indicators is able to aid the organisation to illustrate the level of achievement in sustainability goals during the system operational.

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Conceptual framework for sustainable housing development system model

Housing is a basic need of everyone. In conjunction with this necessity, Malaysia’s housing policy has proposed every family has the chance to own a house. Since the introduction of the new economy policy (NEP) in 1971, the housing programmes have been undertaken by the private and public sector in order to meet the needs of the population. The government had developed the houses with prosperously and the development of housing industries had stimulated the growth of economic sectors (Agus, 2002). The demand for housing keeps increasing in parallel with the growth of population. Many housing schemes were developed and the allocation of budgetary in every five years of Malaysia Plan for housing programmes keeps increasing. Till the Ninth Malaysia


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Plan (2006–2010), the total required housing was 709,400 unit, and an increment of 15.35% if compared with the 615,000 units in Eighth Malaysia Plan (2001–2005). Thus, many housing schemes have been carried out particularly focus in the urban cities. Nonetheless, the authors believe the evolvement of housing neighbourhood development was during the Fifth Malaysia Plan (1986–1995).This can be proved when the government introduced the human settlement concept in the housing schemes. The idea of the concept is interpreted as the housing programmes development with provide the facilities and infrastructures such as schools, clinics, community halls and the promotion of economic opportunities (Agus, 2002). The concept of neighbourhood unit in residential area was introduced in 1923 by Clarence Arthur Perry through his monograph of “The Neighborhood Unit: a Scheme of Arrangement for the Family Life Community” (Lawhon, 2009). The requirement to fulfilling the neighbourhood unit by providing the physical standards that encourage the interaction activities, and also plan the provision of infrastructure and facilities, namely, schools, open spaces, institutional and commercial uses that give the opportunities of economic promotion. As cited by Goh (1991), housing development actually is tantamount to the urbanisation in Malaysia, as a part of a process of capitalist development, which is to accumulate capital by the use of capital to make more capital. Many people live in cities are due to urbanisation process and the push factor of rural migration to urban areas. It is being proven that the population growth in the urban cities was six times higher after the implementation of the NEP (Agus, 2002; Evers, 1979; Agus, 1981).However, since the priority of urban areas being established for capitalist activities, many manufacturing industries and repair firms had surrounded the areas. Consequently, the locations of these unsightly or environmentally unhealthy activities become unacceptable to the society. Plus the growth population in the cities, many unsustainable signs in contemporary cities can be seen and this might be a consequence of poor planning at the micro or neighbourhood level (Codoban and Kennedy, 2008). The housing sustainable development is unattainable without sustainable housing and housing neighbourhood. The linkage of urban planning mechanisms and urbanisation process implicated the development of sustainable housing neighbourhood can help achieving the sustainable urban at the macro level (Kennedy et al., 2005). Moore and Scott (2005) stated that sustainable development is essential for human settlement development that gives full consideration to the needs of achieving economic growth, social development and environment protection. It is increasingly linked with the concept of quality of life, well being and liveability. This included the achieving of sustainability in neighbourhood can lead to sustainable livelihoods (Kato, 1994). Sustainable livelihood is an approach to social and economic activities for all societies to compatible with the preservation of the environment. Lawhon (2009) explained social and economic coherency is significant to social interaction and stability of neighbourhood. Codoban and Kennedy (2008) stated sustainable neighbourhood in residential areas requires strategies that promote green buildings, integrated water systems, cycling, pedestrian, transit friendly design, urban forestry, local energy production; and neighbourhood management. Housing development is instituted as a part of urban planning process which has a direct influence of town planning mechanisms. The emergence of urban planning is the consequence of the development of the cities and capital of the state respectively. Malaysia has undergone a rapid urbanisation since the beginning of 20th century (Goh, 1991). While according to Center Intelligence Agency (2004), 70% of the population is

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located in urban areas. Many of urban health problems are occurring actually manifested the social and environmental problems due to uncontrolled urbanisation and population growth (WHO Report, 2001). The housing development, which affected the urban environmental health but health issues not a merely concern (WHO Report, 2001). Therefore, the root causes of residential conditions should be solved with a holistic approach. The practice of sustainability principles is listed in a conceptual framework specified in Figure 1. Figure 1

Conceptual frameworks for sustainable housing system Variables

1) Affordable housing 2) Profitability 3) Market value 4) Productivity 5) Legal liability 6) Indoor environments 7) Smart location 8) Services 9) Community 10) Energy 11) Materials and resources 12) Water 13) Innovation 14) Pollution prevention 15) Site 16) Ecosystem conservation 17) Heat mitigation

Sustainability criteria

Economic

Social

Sustainable housing index

Environmental

Every model system has a range of variables to represent the field related for practice and implementation. The identified variables for the sustainable housing development are collected from the existing sustainable housing performance assessment tools and the existing sustainable urban and neighbourhood development assessment tools. In summary, the author categorised these variables into the internal (for housing scale) and external aspects (on a housing neighbourhood scale) of housing development criteria. The explication is shown in Table 2. The terminology used should explicitly express the housing relevance when practising sustainability management. The system had integrated the housing neighbourhood (external aspect) characteristics and the housing performances (internal aspect) in the developed designate area which set within the ‘hypothetical boundary’ of require radius to develop as sustainable housing performance initiative (CASBEE for Urban Development, 2007). However, the conceptual framework in Figure 1 that posits economic, social and environmental variables of sustainable housing development must be integrated and interlinked to describe their mutual interdependent and acting among them to influence one another (Basiago, 1999; Montmollin and Scheller, 2007). This possible to establish the links between variables from different themes and assign repeatedly to a single theme (Montmollin and Scheller, 2007).

Incorporating sustainable management system Table 2

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Internal and external aspects of sustainability in housing development

Sustainability component

Description

Internal aspect (housing scale)

Economic

Wise use of economic resources

Achieving the economics of budgetary building

Achieving the economic prosperity of society

Social

Respect for people

Respecting the needs of people in buildings

Respecting the needs of society in the residential area

Wise use of natural resources for building without compromise the need of future generations

Wise use of natural resources in neighbourhood development and leaving enough resources for current and future needs of society

Activity of building development without compromise for living things and destroying the habitat of natural creatures

Preserving and conserving the natural and ecosystem so that living creatures can survive in the environment

Environmental Wise use of natural resources

Respect for living things

External aspect (neighbourhood scale)

Preventing and controlling Preventing and controlling the pollution from pollution of the external building development environment activities Source: Adapted from Blackburn (2007).

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Constitution of housing development mechanisms in urban planning agencies in Malaysia

Malaysia has a three tier system of government with Federal, State and Local Governments. In the hierarchical, the Federal government has a strong manipulation to control over the state governments by its withholding of federal grants. Concurrently, the state governments are responsible over the local governments’ affairs. According the Town and Country Planning Act (TCPA) of 1976 (Malaysia, 1976), the state government is responsible to generate general planning policies while the local authority (LA) is responsible for the detailed plans. However, the Federal Government is not responsible for the preparation of the urban planning policies. The primary role of the Federal Government is to see that the development of social and economic elements plus the environment protection is incorporated into the planning policies of the nation state [TCPA, 1976: Section 8(4a)]. But the fact is, the Federal Government has a strong influence over the preparation of local development plans in practice (Goh, 1991). There are a variety plans prepared by Federal Government to direct urban development and planning movement trends. Such as: Five-year development plans [currently, Malaysia is in the Tenth Malaysia Plan (2011–2015)], New Economic Policy, Industrial Master Plan, National Agricultural Policy etc. Like the Malaysia government hierarchy structure, Malaysia government planning agencies (GPA) also have three categories of administrative departments in urban planning mechanisms. They are the Federal Town and Country Planning Department (FTCPD), the State Town and Country Planning Department (TCPD) and the

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implementation units of local authorities (LAs). The hierarchy of the GPA organisation is shown in the schematic of Figure 2. Figure 2

Federal level

Urban planning agencies organisation (see online version for colours) Secretariat

National Development Planning Committee (NDPC)

Economic Planning Unit

Ministry of Housing and Local Government (MHLG) National and spatial planning division

Federal Town and Country Planning Department (FTCPD)

Urban planning division

Department of Environment (DoE)

Rural planning division Regional planning division Special projects division

State level

State Planning Committee (SPC)

Local level

Town and Country Planning Department (TCPD)

State Economic Planning Unit (SEPU)

State Economic Development Corporation (SEDU)

Local authority (LA)

The highest bureaucratic is the National Development Planning Committee (NDPC).This committee is responsible for the formulation of policies and programmes in Malaysia. The secretariat of this Committee is the Economic Planning Unit (EPU), which will prepare the socio-economic plans for the country. The EPU has a strong influence on the urbanisation process and the prototype of urban development. Meanwhile, the FTCPD is generally responsible for co-coordinating urban planning and also as a consultancy to give advise on the urban planning matters to the Federal Government. Likewise, the FTCPD is administrated by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (MHLG). The department was divided into five divisions, namely the national and spatial planning division, urban planning division, rural planning division, regional planning division and special projects division. The emphasis of Department of Environment (DoE) is because of it influencing in the direction of urban development in Malaysia. This department was established in 1975 which consolidated under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment to implement the Environmental Quality Act (EQA) of 1974. The characteristic of DoE was to act as an enforcement and preventive agency pertaining to environmental quality. In 1985, the DoE has given the legal authority by EQA to practice the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) on certain types of activities.


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In the state level, the highest body involved in the direction of urban planning at the state level is the State Planning Committee (SPC). The role of SPC is to coordinate all planning activities within the state in the Town and Planning Act. There are three organisations of the department instituted under the state government. The first will be the TCPD, the State Economic Planning Unit (SEPU) and the State Economic Development Corporation (SEDU). The role of the TCPD is to give advice to the government and SPC on the use and development of land and urban planning matters. In fact, they have a direct authority in the future development planning of the urban area. The role of SEPU is equally to the EPU in government level. Its main function is to assist the state government to prepare the socio-economic development plans and to coordinate all the socio-economic planning activities within the state. The SEDU is an agency responsible for state development direction, particularly for the development of new towns and industrial estates. Lastly, the lowest level of the government planning agency is the LA. The designation of the LA can be in the form of City Council, Municipal Council or District Council. The powers of LA are allocated in the Local Government Act of 1976. According to the Act, the LA has the authority to control over all aspects of land development and giving the municipal all kinds of services.

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Achieving sustainability of housing development with incorporating SMS into urban planning organisations of Malaysia for managing sustainable housing development progress

The establishment of a management system approach is an assembly tool to facilitate the implementation of an agenda based on the experiences gained by those companies and organisations that have prctised management system approaches (Blackburn, 2007). The tool had been concisely prescribed to enable the organisation practice the sustainability policies in discipline approaches which obligate with the regulation of laws to conform. The explicit benefits of the corporation are they can effectively manage the risks, reduce and prevent the waste and demonstrate the company’s uniqueness to other stakeholders through their sustainability report. The standard set of terminology for management system approach to practice the sustainability in an organisation had been established. The methodology has been outlined in the SMS standard model. The authors adapt the standard model of SMS with incorporate into urban planning organisation for manoeuvring the entire process of housing development and each process phase is listed briefly in Section 5.1.

5.1 Sustainability management system 5.1.1 Identify the scope and the implementation purpose The scope of the SMS in housing development project is administered by the stakeholders involved in the organisation of housing development project. Initially, the NDPC is responsible to formulate and renew the policies and programmes that incorporate the sustainability key terms into the new development guidelines in order to achieve sustainable practice in housing development mechanisms. The efforts also included to identify the scope of jobs, such as: budgetary, coordination, evaluation,

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advisory, maintenance and collaboration. The flexibility of the system enables the communication and encourages the integration of organisation in the scheme.

5.1.2 Define the stakeholders’ responsibility in an organisation structure The key group is referring to a group of people who are involved in the project and have the influence in the sustainable housing development progress. The group can categorise into the explicit and implicit stakeholders. The explicit stakeholders are the actors involved in the project such as governments, bankers, contractors, consultants, developers, etc. The implicit stakeholders may include the governments, occupiers, investors and landowners in housing development who are not involved in the build project but will affect the trends of housing development (Fisher, 2005). For the MHLG which authorised to managing the FTCPD, the ministry has to coordinate those key groups of stakeholders. The merge corporation of these two groups will accelerate and facilitate the management of sustainable housing practices. As the definition of the organisation means the integration of key group people to work together, this will enable the SMS to be sustained for housing pragmatic and systematic procedures.

5.1.3 Identify the policy in description of management process Identification of the policy for housing project will enable the organisation to work toward the sustainability objectives. The continuum of identifying the policy in the description of management process should be carried forward by the decentralised department of urban planning in the state level. Similarity, the SPC will characterise as NDPC to identify the policy in the description of management process in their respective states. The TCPD which acts as secretariat of SPC will conduct the lowest level of LA to restructuring the housing development process with incorporate sustainable management approach. The LA as the operation department is obligated to record every task of planning mechanisms which being done and then report to the key group of stakeholders. This enables the stakeholders to share the ideas and learn together to improve their performance.

5.1.4 Analytical method and reporting periodically Planning before executing the housing project is essential. After the LA proposes the structure and local plans for the development and the use of land, the SPC will analyse the land utility based the policy requirement of sustainable criteria before approving the proposed use of the land. Initially, the analysis of the plan enables the development conformity with the law. Example for energy efficiency in non-residential building legislation (MS1527: 2007), is mandatory to follow during the construction. There are prioritisations to consider when handling the sustainable housing project, such as the risks and opportunities to lead to successful sustainable practice in housing development. Example of the DoE in the mainstream of FTCPD urban planning division, require an environment impact assessment (EIA) for gazette development activities. Except the environment, the other major forces of change factors can affect the trend of sustainability such as population, technology, transport, politics and economics (Fisher, 2005).


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The talent management reviews is instituted in urban planning organisation for managing the housing development process. The reviews are to enable the stakeholder committee in every level of urban planning organisation to evaluate their strengths, needs and capabilities of organisation performance. The analysis results will enable the organisation to identify and compare the gaps between. An alternative plan will be taken if found the gaps between the former administrative of housing projects and replace it with the new SMS approach. The conformity in each organisation levels is essential for the merge collaboration in sustainability policies in order to coordinate the planning activities. The example of analysis report, such as: the previous audit report, regulatory enforcement data, indemnity, penalty clause and levies will enable the agencies to investigate the factors that caused the lack of progress or to identify the dynamic change of the management strategies and policies in the operation. After the critical analysis, the stakeholders in managing the development activities are obliged to identify the measurable of sustainable pragmatic management approaches. Finally, the NDPC of the primary policy makers have to review the cycle lists of such as: the risks, critical issues and objectives.

5.1.5 Implementation and operation The LA as the project executors is responsible to realise the aim of objectives. They are delegated as the city council of every state by the TCPD to function as the implementation for the strategies and tactical plans. The LA is given the powers to provide municipal services, to control all aspects of land development and have the authority to pass by-laws to enable it to perform the tasks more effectively. However, in order to practise a sustainability policy to conform with the project performance, the effective training, communication, tools, guidance and other measurements should be provided to the employees, contractors and other relevant parties who operate and manage the construction activities. During the decision making, the considerations should take into regard the changes of facilities, services, programmes, processes and products. Perhaps, the preparation of the contingency plan is necessary in case for emergency and crises response. However, the plan should try to assure the plans, processes and procedures are applicable to the policy consistently. The need to keep the document policies, regulation requirements, plans, goal missions, progress and performance reports, assessment results and audit reports. As commanded, the SPC in the respective states should publish the procedures designed as to conserve and protect the community, people, property, and environment to their local people. The sake of publication is to give the public opportunities to participate in the housing development process.

5.1.6 Monitoring, corrective and prevention action The organisation shall monitor the issues, namely, the goal of sustainability, progress for the strategic and tactical plans, practice of sustainable housing performance, result of the audits, record of regulating compliance and the public concerned issues. Nonetheless, the organisation shall be responsible also for recording, taking the prevention and correcting

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the happening of incidents such as accidents, spills, legal, ethical violations and others problem been addressed.

5.1.7 Analysis and reporting. There are both internal and external reports should get analyse before reporting. The internal report will include the numerate issues such as, the risk of practising sustainable housing, the factors for success or failure in the performance, the benefits obtained from the changing trend to sustainability, the impediment for achieving the sustainability and the effectiveness of the sustainable management system. On the other hand, the external reports include the sustainability performance results and the risks of housing development harmful to the community users.

5.1.8 Recognition and accountability The achievement of those stakeholders in their performance toward sustainability should be rewarded with the incentives such as: the compensation, promotion or bonus as a token of complimentary. These rewards will motivate the stakeholders to keep forward their accountabilities efforts into further process and the recognition achievement can become the discipline of the organisation to comply with.

5.1.9 Management and stakeholder feedback The organisation should conduct a survey and communicate among the groups to get the feedback on sustainability risks and opportunities, the strength and the weaknesses of performance and report the results. The feedback will be used as the reference to analyse the next planning for better improvement.

5.1.10

Continuation of process cycle

The cycle of sustainable management process has to restart from the initial stage. The leader and those committees shall re-evaluate the SMS and decide whether the system or the organisation’s policies need to improve before reapply in the cycle of management system. The housing managerial process can perceived has the similarity to the methodology of a company management system. The project stakeholders either in planning or building should manage the project in sustainable design approaches during the build environment for housing production. Nonetheless, the SMS soft system can be treated as the roadmap to understand the interlock of complex systems. The standard of these system actually established by the range of models, analytical tools and constructs which been developed in multiple principles to integrate the different technical approaches (Clayton and Radcliffe, 1996).

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Conclusions

The impacts of housing development implicate with economic, social and environmental problems. The implication of the environmental pollution in the housing development scenario is already undergoing the constrained stage of cycle in the sustainability loop.


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The crises occur need to pay much attention before the problems getting detrimental to the whole society and threatening the creatures. The time to transit housing development methods into sustainable ways of development should not hesitate. The evolvement of SMS is the result aroused by the echo of sustainability. The SMS is an open system approach which has the initiative to solve the multi-dimensional, dynamic and evolving matters by systematic, practical and pragmatic measurements (Blackburn, 2007).Inevitably, the application of SMS in housing development project is the strategic to achieve sustainability in housing sector. The transitional to sustainability required the cooperation and integration efforts of entire housing stakeholders. The need of sustainability indicators particularly in housing development has been identified and the variables should be incorporated into housing SMS approach with converting them into measurable performance. The current practices of sustainable housing development in other countries could not be directly adopted to Malaysia due to the constraints such as different cultural patterns, lack of green technology facilitators, lack of government incentives and lack of information on value mentioned by TISSUE (2007). The example of economy change stated by Lorenz et al. (2007) is major influenced by the transformation of socio-cultural, technological and political around the world. In order to overcome this obstacle course, this required the knowledge of information to transfer into sustainable management approach with incorporate into the housing development practice for undergoing the transition of sustainability performance. Although the housing project is tentative and temporary during the construction; but the effect of the housing project will give a long term impact to social, economy and environment elements. The practice of sustainable housing development will give the implication to construction sector with the perceived symptoms of change. Since housing development is constituted and administrated by urban planning agencies, perhaps, the innovation and evolution in urban planning strategies by unifying the SMS approach will reverse the constrained stage of housing development back into the rationality of the cycle loop. The transforming of the cycle with practicing the SMS approach will managing the housing development project in sustainability policies and managing the entire project cycle of housing schemes in the new principles and standard rules. The sustainable housing development regarded as leading towards more sustainable housing design and more sophisticated sustainable construction. The principles of social and environmental sustainability are closely interrelated; however, the practice of both sustainability policies in sustainable housing development will give the beneficial to economic sustainability and vice versa. As mentioned by Basiago (1999), economy is a fundamental to society. This can be perceived that the only synergetic of economic, social and environmental implementation will assist toward the achievement of sustainability in housing development. Lastly, the full cooperation of the organisation to implement the sustainable housing development practice imperatively will give the implication of the sustainability awareness arise from the whole society and this will take effect the transition from conventional type of housing development toward a more sustainability housing design. The practice of housing development should continuously evolve to grapple with the new challenges and solve the unavoidable problems. To suit with the new era of evolution, the understandings of urban planning innovation should fulfil with the terms of its evolution, existing practice, ideology and assumptions of the system (Goh, 1991). It is hoped that

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the practice of SMS in urban planning will contribute to the sustainable housing development in Malaysia to ensure a better quality of life for all Malaysians.

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