Awareness of construction professionals from the Northern Region of Malaysia about low carbon building materials

Despite current global market conditions, a superior financial climate has lowered the demand for innovative low carbon building materials, with construction owners typically prioritizing project value, time, practicality, and aesthetics. This situation creates an obvious dilemma for practitioners and stakeholders, as carbon emission linked to the use of construction materials should decrease. This study presents the awareness among the construction professional in the northern states of Malaysia in relation to low carbon building materials (LCBM) via interviews and structured questionnaire surveys conducted with 93 companies of architects and civil and structural consultants. Of 76.9% valid responses, 44.6% to 51.4% claimed to be “Aware and have a good knowledge” about unfired earth bricks, prefabricated hollowcore floor system (PHFS), and prefabricated timber frame system; however, their usage remained low. PHFS provided satisfactory experiences to practitioners and ranked the highest (20.3%) in the recommendations for future projects. The sustainability and suitability of a particular LCBM is highly determined on-site, has project specific influences, and varies across structures types from project to project.