An examination of the prevalence and effectiveness of environmental management plans as legal requirements on construction projects in the area of Ethekwini municipality KZN.
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Date
2022
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Abstract
The construction sector is regarded as one of the fundamental causes of environmental pollution
globally due to noise, water, air pollution from harmful gases, dust, solid and liquid waste.
Furthermore, due to heavy machinery operations, oil spills occur frequently. Therefore, an
environmental management plan was introduced as a document prepared during the
environmental management process to guide the environmental impact mitigation through the
entire construction project life cycle, from project initiation to decommissioning as a legal
requirement for all contractors to comply. However, despite compliance in the form of an
environmental management plan being a legal requirement for construction projects in South
Africa, environmental management plans are not prevalent, pervasive, enforced on construction
sites. Therefore, the study examines the prevalence and effectiveness of environmental
management plans as legal requirements on construction projects in eThekwini Municipality of
KwaZulu-Natal. A quantitative study was employed, and data were analyzed using IBM
Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 27. Descriptive statistics was adopted for
the data analysis. The technique used to collect data was convenience sampling based on
proximity and familiarity and completed in close-ended questionnaires through google forms and
completed questionnaires copies, 91 population participated in the study from different
contractors. Cronbach’s Alpha reliability test was used to determine the internal consistency of
the constructs used to examine the prevalence and effectiveness of environmental management
plans as legal requirements. Internal consistency of various scales was deemed acceptable for
interpretation. The results revealed that contractors do not provide enough training and induction
about environment management plans to staff and construction workers before the project starts.
Therefore, this causes contractors to not fully comply with an environmental management plan
because site managers and construction workers are not making a better-informed decision on
protecting the environment when they are physically involved in the execution of activities onsite.
The results further suggested that contractors see environmental management plans as a
waste of time; they prefer to focus on production and profit maximization. Therefore, this has led
to contractors not complying with construction projects' environmental management plans. The
results also suggested that few contractors have environmental management plans on their daily
site Instruction; not all contractors consider environmental management plans on their daily site
instructions. The absence of environmental management plan on daily site instructions of
contractors on-site is one of the factors causing contractors to continue harming and degrading
the environment because site management and construction workers are not daily reminded about
the environmental hazards on-site during the execution of activities. Therefore, contractors need
to start considering environmental management plans on their daily site instruction to remind their
employees about expected and potential hazards because they are physically involved with execution
on site. Therefore, it will benefit the effectiveness of environmental environment plans
on construction projects.