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1. IntroductionSustainable development is considered to be a quality of life; allowing people to live in a healthyenvironment and improve social, economic and environmental conditions for present and futuregenerations (Ortiz et al., 2009). In the last years, sustainable development has gained much attention.The Brundtland report has called for a strategy to unify the building development and theenvironmental impact. Sustainable development has to meet the needs of the present withoutcompromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Brundtland report, 1987).Commercial and residential buildings are responsible for a large percentage of global emissions ofgreenhouse gases from fossil fuel combustion (Coffey et al., 2009). In the USA, residential andcommercial buildings are responsible for 18% and 21% respectively of this total greenhouse gasproduction (Kwoka and Rajkovich, 2010). In Europe, the building sector is responsible for one thirdof the total energy consumption (Brown and Southworth, 2008). The commercial building sector hastherefore great potentials to mitigate CO2 emissions and reduce energy consumption.In recent years, sustainable office development has gained attention from both governmentalorganizations and commercial companies (Clift, 2007). Research has contributed to this developmentby evaluating new technical solutions for sustainable building and possibilities for governments tostimulate sustainable development. From the perspective of the developing companies, however, littleresearch has been done on the critical success factors in the process of developing sustainable offices.1.1 Barriers for sustainable office developmentsBarriers for sustainable office developments begin at the design stage. There is no an evident goal.Clients rarely demand an energy efficient building, and architects are not forcing it on to the agenda(Scrase, 2001); this is part of the so called the circle of blame phenomenon (SCFG, 2000). Otherbarriers mentioned are: the involvement of the environmental engineers is to late in the designprocess in general and particular in the design process building services (Bordass, 1993), theperception that sustainable buildings are costly and non standard products (Gibson and Lizieri, 1999),lack of information on energy costs for the tenant (Gibson and Lizieri, 1999), non-ownership ofbuildings and benefits of sustainable offices are intangible, or poorly understood, by commercialproperty investors, owners and professionals (Scrase, 2001).1.2 The project critical success factorsThe concept of project success factors is first introduced by Ruben and Seeling in the year 1967(Rubin and Seeling, 1967) and the terminology critical success factors (CSF) is used by Rockart in1982 for the first time (Rockart, 1982). In the last three decades a considerable many studies havebeen executed on CSFs for construction projects. Researchers are (Ashley et al. 1987), (Jefferies etal., 2002), (Pinto and Selvin, 1988), (Songer and Molenaar, 1997), (Chan et al., 2001), (Nguyen et al,518

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