A Review on the Government’s Way Forward Policy Towards Environmental Sustainability Construction Projects in Malaysia by 2020

Major flood experience in 2014 has served as one of the reminders to the Malaysian government to start building the nation’s resilience towards sustaining the impact of unexpected natural disasters. For that, the Construction Industry Transformation Plan (CITP) 2016–2020 has been established and introduced to shift the construction industry “business as usual” to a more robust “moving forward” approach by focusing on transforming the current construction industry in Malaysia into environmentally sustainable construction industry. The aim of this review paper is to identify the types of natural disasters that commonly occurred in Malaysia as well as programs and initiatives developed by Malaysian government in order to promote and support a comprehensive sustainable construction in the Malaysian practice. It starts by explaining the natural disasters in Malaysia, then followed with the discussion about sustainability journey in the Eleventh Malaysia Plan, and lastly, discussion on CITP 2016–2020. From the review, the commonly occurred natural disasters in Malaysia are floods and landslides which impede the sustainable development in the country. Under the CITP blueprint which forms a part of the recent national plan, the government has shifted its standard, conventional, and costly approach of “grow first, clean-up later” into a greener course of “green growth” to assure that most of the procured development projects are environmentally sustainable. Therefore, instead of making Malaysian construction industry as a world-recognized competitor with the quality, safety and professionalism; environmental sustainability; productivity; and internationalization as the primary thrusts, CITP 2016–2020 also helps to fully transform the construction industry into a modern, highly productive, and sustainable industry by the year 2020.