The concept of sustainability is regarded to be threefold: environmental, economic, and social. This is usually identified as the triple bottom line of sustainability and is often represented by three intertwined circles. Therefore, for a construction to be sustainable, it should be environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable. However, the extent to which green building rating tools evaluate the three pillars of sustainability is questionable. This research aims to analyze the effectiveness of eight international green building rating tools in evaluating environmental, economic, and social sustainability in buildings. The credit points of each rating tool was initially categorized based on the related category of sustainability and a comparison analysis was carried out based on a normalized score. Finally, the comparison result is presented with a radar diagram. Further, three case study buildings were also analyzed based on the credit points achieved. Accordingly, environmental sustai...

Construction industry is typically vital to the economy of any country. It appears that on-going large-scale building and infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka have attracted numerous international contractors. Moreover, in Sri Lanka, there are several foreign investors, and to-be-funded mega government projects at their inception and initial stages, increasing competition which has already been fierce. However, these massive projects under various stakeholders with different interests usually initiate conflicting claims, if not resolved, will likely lead to disputes, and filing law suits. Once a dispute is crystallized, there are commonly used alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms. However, the causes leading to the claims to form a dispute, and the effective ADR methods are largely dependent on the perspective of the stakeholders. This research aims to identifying those dispute causes, factors affecting the selection of dispute resolution methods, and the most effective ADR method in the perspective of different parties to construction projects in the Sri Lankan construction industry. First, an extensive literature review was carried out to identify the ADR context in Sri Lanka. Second, a comprehensive questionnaire survey was conducted involving professionals representing various stakeholders such as contractors, clients and consultants. Survey responses were then analyzed using special purpose statistical software (SPSS). To determine the statistical significance difference among stakeholders' perception, Kruskal-Wallis H test was used with a 90% confidence level. This research thus provides additional insights into causes of claims and ADR selection from different perspectives.