When a building design fails to meet the end-user's needs after construction, it is considered faulty. Faulty designs often lead to renovation, demolition, and material waste. This study aims to identify critical factors that influence the implementation of the Lean Premise Design (LPD) scheme in high-rise residential (HRR) buildings to facilitate sustainability practices, ensure energy conservation, promote innovative green technologies and water efficiency, and reduce abortive works in Hong Kong's HRR buildings. A comprehensive literature review of concepts similar to LPD scheme and sustainability practices in designing and developing high-rise buildings was undertaken. In addition, interviews were conducted to validate factors influencing LPD adoption. The study focused on sustainable building design relating to users’ behavior patterns and expectations, social needs, green maintenance technologies, and government initiatives. According to the mean score ranking, 20 factors are critical to adopting LPD schemes, accounting for 47.6% of all identified factors. Government-sponsored LPD education, explicit LPD objectives in design, and construction waste reduction are among the key drivers of LPD. Nonetheless, developers’ emphasis on return on investment, varied buyer expectations, and diverse end-user requirements stand as the most significant barriers to LPD. The Mann–Whitney U test also revealed that expert groups disagree on some factors. The study's findings are consistent with recent research on the critical success factors of identified sustainability concepts in the construction industry.