## 5 Conclusions  
Present research analyzed various aspects of risk to optimize the value creation in the development of green buildings. Sixty-six (66) risk factors were classified in 5 risk categories, including functional, financial, operational, environmental, and management, with an objective to evaluate the impacts of these risks on the value creation of green buildings design. A questionnaire compiling a list of identified risk factors was hand-delivered to 300 practitioners working for value engineering of the construction industry in Saudi Arabia. The overall response rate was 29.7%. Among the respondents, 45% were managers, 38% were engineers, and 17% were architects who participated in the survey. The participation from young professionals with 0-5 years of experience was 16%, and from the middle-career professionals with 6-10 years of experience was 28%. Interestingly, senior professionals with more than 10 years of experience held the largest contribution (56%) among all the respondents. Based on the participants responses, descriptive statistics identified important risk factors with a minimum mean value of 3.81 (i.e., higher than the average overall mean of 3.78) and severity indices of 76.18%. Furthermore, the principal component analysis (PCA) extracted 16 components, based on the likelihood of risk factors impacting the value created by green building design, that carry an eigenvalue of more than 1 and account for nearly 79.939% of the whole variance. Finally, the factor analysis grouped 35 most significant risk factors in 5 clusters, i.e., 8 in functional risk, 13 in financial risk, 3 in operational risk, 3 in environmental risk, and 8 in management risk cluster. Due to the differences in perception regarding the risk factors, there is a need for improved communication between the decision-makers' groups for developing a shared understanding of project value creation and associated risks. Absence of such understanding may raise the possibility of conflicts amongst different groups that ultimately effects the expected outcomes of the project. Future work can establish the interaction between various value drivers (identified in the authors' previous work) and the risk factors (selected in the present study) using an effective framework to enhance value creation in green buildings. Furthermore, the impact of the risk factors on project constrains--i.e., quality, cost, and time--can also be investigated. A clear understanding of new risk clusters and their implications will be instrumental in assessing the design indicators and evaluating the impact of risk factors on value creation of green building in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the world. Figure 8: Ranking the management risk factors impacting on the project value. **Author Contributions:** W.A.--conceptualization, methodology, survey, performed detailed data collection and analysis, software, and original manuscript. H.H.--conceptualization, methodology, and paper writing. H.B.--conceptualization, methodology, administration, supervision, visualization, and paper review. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. **Funding:** The research was sponsored by Qassim University, Ministry of Education, Saudi Arabia. **Acknowledgments:** The author gratefully acknowledges respondents from the construction industry in Saudi Arabia. The first author acknowledges the financial support secured at Qassim University that was provided by the Saudi Cultural Bureau in United Kingdom under the Higher Education Scholarship Program of Saudi Arabia. Authors also like to thank the School of Engineering, Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Liverpool, UK for providing the technical support for this research. **Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest. **Appendix A**  
Sample of the second part of the design questionnaire for the risk factor