Building construction workforce sustainability competencies for promoting circular economy: guidelines for higher education institutions

Purpose In light of the global shift towards sustainability, there is a critical need to adopt Circular Economy (CE) principles in construction. However, the transition towards CE in the construction sector is impeded by a lack of workforce competencies aligned with sustainability and circularity. Higher education institutions (HEIs) play a pivotal role in bridging this gap, but current training and educational models remain largely rooted in traditional construction pedagogy. This study aims to develop guidelines for HEIs to build construction workforce sustainability competencies that explicitly support the promotion of CE. Design/methodology/approach The study adopted a quantitative research design, using a structured questionnaire. A stratified random sampling technique was used to select 382 respondents among key stakeholders in the higher education and construction sectors. Findings The study found that systems thinking, life-cycle assessment, whole-life carbon accounting, design for disassembly, stakeholder engagement and value engineering are the top six significant sustainability competencies required by construction workforce to promote CE. The study further developed a comprehensive guideline for HEIs to embed the identified competencies in construction workforce education. The guidelines highlight significant strategies such as embedding competencies in curriculum design, making circular impact assessment mandatory and graded, running a design for disassembly and adaptability studio and teaching value engineering for circularity. Originality/value The study directly advances sustainable development goals (SDGs) 4, SDG 11 and SDG 12 by consolidating the identified strategies for HEIs into coherent and sequential guidelines, advancing beyond isolated interventions but towards an integrated roadmap for embedding CE competencies.