Data-Driven Analysis of Barriers to Net Zero Practises in the UK Construction Sector: A Multidisciplinary Approach Using Clustering and Topic Modelling

The construction industry’s operations heavily contribute almost half of the UK’s carbon emissions and reportedly falling behind in achieving the net zero targets set out by the Paris Agreement. This necessitates a deeper understanding of the main barriers to achieving net zero in the construction industry. As such, this paper aims to gain an understanding of the barriers to procuring and building net zero assets through the lenses of the construction industry and the built environment’s interdisciplinary workforces. The study adopted an
exploratory qualitative research approach involving the use of semi structured interviews conducted for 13 professionals working across a range of sectors, different sizes of organisations in the construction industry and built environment with varying levels of experience. The factors and discussions taken from the interview transcriptions were collected and subjected to thematic analysis using the K-Mean clustering learning algorithm and Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modelling. The analysis produces thirty-two distinct factors clustered/modelled into five themes/topics referred to as barriers to net zero adoption in the UK construction sector. These barriers are
financial and economic barriers, technological and expertise challenges, regulatory and policy issues, industry practices and cultural resistance, and supply chain and operational issues. The
findings of this research indicated that net-zero construction is usually seen as inherently expensive, with financial budgets often being prioritised ahead of net-zero goals. Thus, financial support and incentives from the government are required to alleviate the high costs
associated with net zero technologies, particularly for smaller organizations to drive the adoption of net zero practices.

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