With 22 years of experience, Jee Lian leads Gamuda’s ESG strategy, overseeing the Gamuda Green Plan, sustainability reports, and regional projects. Previously, she managed communications for Malaysia’s KVMRT metro lines and held roles at Lenovo and UEM Sunrise. She was a 2022 UN Women Asia-Pacific WEPs runner-up and a 2023 SPARK Asia 200 Digital Leader.

In a recent conversation with The Global Woman Leader Magazine, Ong discusses the evolving sustainability landscape in Malaysia’s construction sector, highlighting key trends and challenges. She emphasizes the transformative potential of emerging technologies and innovative practices, and the importance of stakeholder engagement, transparency, and trust-building in advancing sustainability efforts.

How would you describe the current state of sustainability initiatives within Malaysia's construction industry? What key trends and challenges are shaping the landscape today?

If you were to ask me this question six years ago, my answer would have been – the sustainability state in the construction industry in Malaysia was at the awareness stage. The topic of sustainability was starting to be a conversation, and not at all at any implementation stage. Today in 2024 given the growing external pressures especially from the global investment community who evaluates beyond the financial P&L of a company; there is the public and private sectors’ strong will in the construction industry to implement sustainability. This is evident with national policies and roadmaps for decarbonization, and regulators implementing sectoral guides for reporting disclosures.

Malaysia's construction industry is making strides towards sustainability, but there's room for improvement. Awareness and adoption of sustainability practices still need to be accelerated. Cost factors and incentives can either discourage implementation or hasten adoption for sustainability. Overall, Malaysia is on the right track, and continued efforts are needed to fully embrace sustainable construction practices.

What emerging technologies or innovative practices do you believe have the most potential to transform sustainability efforts in the construction sector? How can companies leverage these advancements to reduce their environmental footprint?

Construction is traditionally a slower adopter of new practices, and sustainability is no exception. The supply chain is wide and deep, and labour participation is intensive in this sector.

Traditional construction prioritizes speed and cost-effectiveness. Implementing sustainable measures often requires upfront investments in design, materials, and potentially new technologies to reduce carbon footprint throughout a product life cycle. This often can be a barrier for companies especially those in the SME (small medium enterprise) level. For bigger companies, implementing sustainability aspects is a green premium. If it’s not a requirement by the client, opting for sustainability and green designs and/or materials may price one out.

There is also limited awareness and knowledge. While awareness of sustainability is growing, some companies and individuals may not fully understand the long-term benefits or how to effectively implement sustainable practices. This knowledge gap can hinder adoption. However, in the last two years – there have been many efforts to reduce this gap. I am a strong advocate in this area being a member in construction industry associations and professional bodies (such as Master Builders Association Malaysia, CEO Action Network) to speak and discuss on ESG matters, and providing industry advice and feedback on guidelines and policies for implementation to regulators, ministries and climate-related bodies (such as Capital Markets, TNFD - The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures and UNGC - United Nations Global Compact to level up the construction sector comprising contractors, developers, supply chain, analysts and bankers).

In what ways do you think female leaders are uniquely positioned to drive sustainability initiatives in the construction industry? How can their perspectives and approaches influence organizational culture and operational practices?

For starters, I personally don’t think gender plays a pivotal position in the success degree. However, being a female does give a more comprehensive approach as construction is quite a male-domineering industry. This is important because gender parity, gender pay gap, diversity, equity &inclusion are all vital aspects to be considered. This is on top of encouraging the 30% Club (the global business-led campaign founded in the UK to advocate for gender parity in boardrooms and senior leadership; with the aim of achieving a minimum of 30% female representation on the boards of FTSE 100 companies).

As a female, speaking from a personal viewpoint as a working mother and being involved in large infrastructure construction projects like a mass rapid transit railway – I understand the challenges of maintaining a job and building a career. I also understand while the world and management hopes and have in place programmes and levers to encourage more women to be retained in the workforce, certain approaches at the industry and company levels can influence positive practices for increased women participation. This does augur well for sustainability in terms of the ‘S’ part of the ‘ESG’ – the social part.

What we have been working on thus far which has been successful in building a sustainable workforce is to the increment of women participation in the workforce in the construction sector. This begins with young girls in secondary school by creating awareness and importance of STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) before they enter college and university. At tertiary education phase, we offer more scholarships to girls in STEM majors. When the girls graduate and enter the workforce, we provide and encourage job placements that give them the right exposure at projects’ sites and management. Further along as they move up the career ladder and align with their personal own journey (for example get married and have children or be a care giver to their elderly parents), we have work-life balance arrangements.

As you can see, the work programmes are planned and intended along a girl’s life journey.  This benefits any organization in this holistic, all-encompassing approach. The company has a more gender balanced workforce, which is an advantage to any sector the business is in. Creating a more equitable and inclusive industry for everyone.

How can construction companies effectively engage with stakeholders to promote and communicate their sustainability efforts? What strategies can be employed to ensure transparency and build trust with the community, investors, and regulatory bodies?

One of the most effective ways is constant communication. Being part of the conversation and building more dialogues between the public and private sectors. Thus far this has proven to be effective as ESG is a broad spectrum, impacting diverse stakeholders. In the past five years I have been active in dialogues with investment, regulatory, associations and media platforms.

The first step is always creating that awareness on ESG, and helping stakeholders connect the dots on “what’s in for them.” Once that awareness is created (knowing their respective Scope 1 & Scope 2), the next step is helping one another to have a roadmap which is effective in a sector as Scope 3 is everyone’s. Hence discussing the successes and challenges are important so everyone can leverage on.

The third step is to set measurements or targets and monitor the progress. This entails frameworks, standards, disclosures and what counts as practicality to help climate change.

How can construction companies navigate the evolving regulatory landscape in Malaysia to ensure compliance with sustainability standards? What proactive measures can be taken to stay ahead of regulatory changes?

Regular and open dialogues between stakeholders are necessary to ensure construction companies are in alignment with the current and future sustainability standards. What is important is feedback from companies on new sustainability regulations, guidelines and standards before they are implemented for the sector for applicability. Given companies are the ones who will be the implementors, it’s important that feedback is gathered, and opportunities given for UAT (user acceptance test) stages before a certain policy, mandatory reporting of some sort of platform, financial incentive or tax, or processes are put in place.

What is your vision for the future of sustainability in Malaysia's construction industry? What key milestones and achievements do you foresee in the next decade, and how can industry leaders work together to achieve these goals?

The adoption of sustainability in Malaysia’s construction industry will surely be on an upward trend. We are already seeing sustainable construction standards being introduced from overseas and there’s local versions of it. For example - BREEAM, Green Building Index, Sustainable Infrastar, LEED, Low Carbon Cities Framework to name a few.

Carbon tax is also being discussed on how best to implement it. Alternative materials that are greener are now being deliberated at the design stage before construction, and even at the construction stage – people are already looking into climate resilience and adaptation. With all these on-going, things can only get better and with industry leaders working together, the adoption of more sustainable ways in the construction industry can be accelerated especially when the public and private sectors come together at more levels. There must be push and pull factors from the public side for the private sectors to play a more active role alongside to move the sector quickly.