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This paper aims to focus on 11 digital technologies (i.e. building information modeling, artificial intelligence and machine learning, 3D scanning, sensors, robots/automation, digital twin, virtual reality, 3D printing, drones, cloud computing and self-driving vehicles) that are portrayed in future trend reports and hype curves. The study concentrates on the current usage and knowledge of digital technologies in the Swedish architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry to gain an insight in the possible expectations and future trajectory of these digital technologies.

The study applies an abductive approach which is based on three different types of methods. These methods are a literature and document study which focused on 11 digital technologies, two workshops with industry (13 participants) and an online survey (N = 84).

The paper contributes to a current state analysis of the Swedish AEC industry concerning digital technologies and discusses the trajectory of these technologies for the AEC industry. The paper identifies hype factors, in which the knowledge of a digital technology is related to its usage. From the hype factors, four zones that show different stages of digital technology usage and maturity in the industry are induced.

The contribution of the paper is twofold. The paper shows insight into opportunities, the current barriers, use and knowledge of digital technologies for the different actors in the AEC industry. Furthermore, the study shows that the AEC industry is behind the traditional Gartner hype curves and contributes with defining four zones for digital technologies for the Swedish AEC industry: confusion, excitement, experimentation and integration.

This paper aims to explore the potential capabilities of the application of computing features (CFs) in resolving the most common issues that adversely affect performance in architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) projects.

Through a comprehensive review of the literature, 10 most significant CFs were identified. Also, the 15 most prevalent issues in AEC projects (AECIs), for which computers can provide remedial solutions, were determined and categorized into three phases of design, construction and operation. Potential impacts of each CF on handling AECIs in each of the three stages were assessed based on experts’ perceptions.

CFs are ranked based on their potential on solving the identified AECIs. So too, the order of the most common AECIs is provided in terms of their disposition for being solved by CFs. In this regard, findings reveal that the most effective CF in addressing AECIs is “artificial intelligence” and the most solvable AECI by using CFs is “increased costs and poor budgeting.” Furthermore, the most appropriate CF to handle each AECI is specified, as a result of which, it is inferred CFs are more effective in handling operation-related issues, compared to design, construction phases.

The results can provide a profound insight into software/tool selection based on features that enable technological tools and programs to handle AECIs in the three major phases of projects. Moreover, technology providers and vendors are provided with a benchmark to supply products according to the demands of the AEC industry. The study provides a readily available point of reference for practitioners in selecting various CFs for handling common AECIs that affect their projects.

A large body of research is available on the evaluation of various computer-based technologies and tools. Nevertheless, little, if any, study exists that explores the potential of underlying CFs of these technologies in addressing endemic problems across various stages of AEC projects. This study is one of the first in its kind that shifts to exploring various CFs, as the main enablers of computer technologies, establish links between these CFs and common issues of projects and assesses the potential of various CFs in addressing common problems of construction projects.

In the era of digitalisation, blockchain has the potential to fundamentally change the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry's workflow, trust and procurement environments. However, few studies have investigated blockchain adoption barriers in the AEC industry in detail. Therefore, the study aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of these barriers and their interdependent relationships in the context of the AEC industry.

Based on a review of the literature, industry reports and expert feedback, 11 barriers towards adopting the blockchain were identified. Then, the authors investigated the interdependencies amongst the factors by adopting a two-stage integrated interpretive structural modelling (ISM) and decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method.

The findings show that the lack of information technology infrastructure (BC4) and legal and regulatory uncertainty (BC11) are the most prominent barriers towards blockchain adoption in the AEC industry.

The research contributes in providing a clearer understanding of related barriers and potential solutions for practitioners in this area. Subsequently, the identification of adoption barriers can enable an important knowledge foundation and suggest possible solutions for adopting blockchain techniques successfully and effectively in the AEC industry.

The study lays an essential research foundation for the effective adoption and use of blockchain in the AEC industry.

Rejecting building information modeling (BIM) can negatively impact the architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) industries. While BIM is trending globally, its implementation in post-conflict low-income economies is still limited. The purpose of this paper is to identify the critical factors for implementing BIM in a post-conflict low-income economy, using Afghanistan as a case study.

This study identifies potential affecting factors for BIM implementation through reviewing existing literature and interviewing AEC professionals in Afghanistan. Then, the factors are inserted into a questionnaire survey and disseminated with Afghanistan’s AEC practitioners. The collected data was analyzed to determine the critical factors. Also, the underlying relationships between the critical factors were established through factor analysis.

A total of 11 critical factors are affecting BIM implementation in Afghanistan. From those, nine factors can be grouped into the following three components: technological, environmental and organizational. Two factors, “cost-benefit of implementing BIM” and “market demand for BIM,” are recurring in low- and middle-income economies. Conversely, the “presence of appropriate projects to implement BIM” is the unique critical factor for Afghanistan that might affect other post-conflict low-income economies.

This study focuses on affecting factors for BIM implementation in post-conflict low-income economies, using Afghanistan as a reference rather than other types of economies that have been widely studied.

This conceptual paper aims to develop a multi-level mental health management framework for project management practitioners (PMPs) in architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) project organizations through organizational design theories to extend current knowledge on mental health by revealing organizational, project and external environmental factors contributing to mental health management in AEC project organizations.

A systematic literature review was adopted to propose a theoretical model that integrated five organizational design theories: institutional theory, agency theory, resources-based theory (RBT), contingency theory and complexity theory.

The model reveals permanent organization, project organization and external environment factors for mental health management in AEC project organizations. It further proposed hypothetical interrelationships between elements of permanent organization, project organization, external environment and mental health management indicators to unravel the resultant effects of the interactions on mental health of PMPs.

This research contributes to the body of knowledge by developing a multi-level mental health management framework that identify and shows how combination permanent organization, project organization and external environment elements impact mental health of PMPs in AEC project organizations. It offers a model that offers guidance to practitioners on permanent organization and project organization management practices that can be implemented to improve mental health.

As an emerging visualization technology, virtual reality (VR) falls into the dilemma of having great potential but a low adoption degree in the architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) industry. However, few studies paid attention to studying barriers affecting VR’s adoption and their inner mechanisms. This makes AEC users hard to catch the key points for VR’s implementations. This study aims to get a clear structure of these barriers and provide insights for the improvement.

First, 12 major VR-AEC adoption barriers were identified by a systematic literature review and expert interviews (EI). Second, EI and similarity aggregation method were conducted to achieve reliable barrier relationships. Third, interpretive structural modeling was used to establish a multi-level model for barriers. Finally, ten crucial barriers were targeted with a comprehensive strategy framework.

The findings help AEC stakeholders get a thorough understanding of the VR-AEC adoption barriers. Besides, the inner mechanism among barriers is revealed and analyzed, followed by a systematic strategy framework. It is anticipated that users could conduct more effective VR-AEC promotions in the future.

This paper is the first to propose a comprehensive literature review on the VR-AEC adoption barriers. In addition, this paper is novel in building a hierarchy model that explores barriers’ inner mechanism, where structural strategies are proposed.

University students are the future driving forces in and leaders of the architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) industry advancement. Although BIM pedagogical studies have been performed in different institutions, there has not been sufficient research providing a global perspective of BIM education and students’ perceptions toward BIM practice and application following their learning progress. The purpose of this paper is to adopt student samples from Swinburne University of Technology (SUT, Australia), Wenzhou University (WZU, China) and University of Brighton (UK) as three case studies to investigate the BIM practice and application-related perceptions and motivations.

Based on the thorough understanding of the BIM pedagogical delivery including teaching contents and assessment methods among the three institutions, a questionnaire survey approach was adopted to collect AEC students’ perceptions of BIM. Within each selected case, statistical analysis was conducted to investigate both the overall sample and subgroup differences regarding students’ opinions on BIM’s functions (e.g. as a 3D visualization tool) and BIM usefulness in various industry professions, their motivation in BIM-related jobs and their perceptions of challenges encountered in BIM practice and application. Multiple factors influencing BIM learners’ perceptions were discussed, such as pedagogical assessment approach, and individual factors (e.g. disciplines).

The results showed that students were able to discern the latest industry practices and critical thinking in BIM movements. For example, SUT students perceived more challenges from the government legislation or incentive policies, which was consistent with Australia’s BIM policy movement. WZU students tended to have less positive views on BIM usefulness. The results also indicated fewer differences regarding perceived challenges among students from these three institutions.

This study contributed to the body of knowledge in managerial BIM by focusing on learners’ perceptions from the perspective of students’ understanding, motivation and individual views of BIM, which were insightful to both BIM educators and employers. By initiating the framework of BIM learning process and its influence factors, the current study serves as a point of reference to continue the future work in strengthening the connection between institutional BIM education and industry practical needs worldwide.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a digitalization model (DM) for building construction courses in architectural education as a response to the recent emerging technologies in the era of digital transformations. This DM is developed and applied through augmented reality (AR) technologies to boost perception, understandings and ability to solve building construction details.

Based on a thorough review of recent technologies like AR, virtual reality (VR), building information modelling (BIM) and their applications in architectural education, the methodology involves the generation of a model, its application and evaluation. The model is based on the integration of BIM and AR which is applied into a third year “Building Construction Project” course. Each student has designed a residential building and accordingly prepared the construction drawings by adapting the DM. An online survey –based on Technology Acceptance Model – is conducted to evaluate the DM by quantitative data analysis from SPSS and Excel.

The key findings of the study include the following items: determination of the proper digital tools, the definition of the steps and workflow based on the building project phases to develop construction drawings and define precise details effectively. By the help of this, the DM is generated and applied. According to the survey and results, the DM which involves BIM-based AR is considered as beneficial, highly motivating and providing better perception on construction details.

Implication of AR/VR technologies is frequently seen in design studios, whereas building construction courses state its traditional approach. However, there is a huge potential in the digitalization of building construction education by increasing the perception of students together with the increased level of communication. The study aims to close the gap of digitalization by proposing a DM, which brings a systematic approach considering each phase of building construction project as conceptual, schematic, design development and construction documents by using BIM integrated AR. Moreover, the novel model specifically brings a new approach by generation of QR codes for construction details to embed videos or simulations into the two-dimensional drawing sheets. Furthermore, the DM proposes a new approach to satisfy emerging needs and requirements of the Architecture Engineering Construction industry.

Building information modelling (BIM) has had a significant impact on the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector in the past several years. However, not much is published concerning small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) adopting BIM in the construction industry. To address this knowledge gap, a complete and in-depth literature review of the adoption of BIM by SMEs in the AEC sector is conducted in this study. The paper also provides a comprehensive review of the mainstream studies of adoption of BIM in the AEC organisations.

Based on a five-stage literature review, 54 articles on the adoption of BIM by SMEs from the period 2009 to 2019 were critically analysed from the following three perspectives: (1) the number of articles produced; (2) the research focus and (3) the author's contributions. The techniques of the visualisation of similarities (VOSviewer) software were used to analyse the citation networks of the 54 articles as identified.

From the analysis, it was established that the number of studies on BIM adoption by SMEs in the reviewed journals has not been increasing and not many articles are available. The finding makes the argument that BIM adoption by SMEs is not a focus point but rather the adoption and implementation of BIM is generalised in the AEC sector. In addition, the results revealed that most of the published articles come from the United Kingdom (UK). However, this finding is hardly surprising due to the requirements in the UK, which have made the adoption of BIM mandatory on all publicly funded projects and are at level 2 BIM. The other highly ranked countries by origins of studies on the adoption of BIM by SMEs were found to be Australia and the United States of America (USA), all of which are developed nations or economies. Some key BIM in SME research trends (adoption, enforcement, benefits, strategies, skills gap, awareness, education and training, and technology) were identified and evaluated.

The results presented in this journal are only applicable to SMEs in the AEC sector. As a result of little available literature on the adoption of BIM in developing countries, the articles have been drawn from developed countries. The dataset was mainly extracted from the Scopus database for the analysis.

An accomplished series content analysis of the implementation and adoption of BIM by SMEs from international construction journals were reported. The study makes significant and emergent contribution by building on the foundation of BIM research in SMEs as well as providing a reference point for the interpretation of findings, as well as directions for future research.

Built environment encounters substantial risks and challenges in its evolution towards sustainable development. International businesses and multinational engineering organisations face global connectivity challenges between business units, especially during the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), which has profoundly disrupted the construction industry throughout the world. That raises the need to manage global connectivity as a main strategic goal of multinational architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) organisations. This study aims to develop a strategic framework managing challenges of integrating lean construction (LC) and integrated project delivery (IPD) on construction megaprojects (CMPs) towards global integrated delivery (GID) transformative initiatives in multinational AEC organisations.

“Mixed research methods” involving a two-stage quantitative and qualitative research approach is adopted. The qualitative research methodology consists of a literature review to assess challenges to integrate LeanIPD&GID on CMPs. There is an assessment of conceptualisation of LeanIPD&GID and GID strategy placements, development of LeanIPD&GID integration framework and future of work (FOW) global initiatives with multiple validations. The analysis involved semi-structured interviews and focus group techniques. Stage 2 consisted of an empirical questionnaire survey that shaped the foundation of analysis and findings of 190 respondents from 23 countries with an extensive cosmopolitan experience of megaprojects in construction. The survey examined a set of 20 challenges to integrate LeanIPD&GID on CMPs resulting from a detailed analysis of extant literature after validation. Descriptive and inferential statistical tests were exploited for data analysis and percentage score analysis.

The research conceptualised LeanIPD&GID principles, proposed GID strategy placements, a framework for managing challenges of LeanIPD&GID transformative initiatives, FOW global initiatives and key performance indicators (KPIs). It concluded that the most significant challenges to integrate of LeanIPD&GID on CMPs are “lack of governmental incentives, policies, regulations or legal frameworks”, “lack of client’s awareness and IPD experience amongst key stakeholders”, “lack of organisation’s senior-management and client’s commitment to IPD approaches”, “resistance of industry to change from traditional procurement to IPD” and “lack of integrated synergies between LC, IPD working towards LeanIPD&GID”. Awareness of building information modelling (BIM) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is higher than LC, and LC awareness is higher than IPD knowledge. While BIM adoption in the MENA region is higher than LC, LC is still taking its first steps, and IPD has little implementation. LeanBIM is slightly integrated, while LeanIPD integration is almost not present.

The research findings, conclusions and recommendations provide a proposed framework for implementation, KPIs and GID strategy placements for LeanIPD&GID transformative initiatives to integrate LeanIPD&GID on CMPs and FOW global initiatives. This will allow project key stakeholders to place emphasis on managing LeanIPD&GID challenges identified in this research and commence GID strategies. The study has provided effective practical strategies for enhancing integration of LeanIPD&GID transformative initiatives on CMPs.