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This paper aims to evaluate the quality control systems for constructions in seven countries in Europe with the purpose to trace innovative approaches and best practices that can serve as examples for other countries.

The paper is based on a series of research projects carried out over a number of years. The research results were updated in 2016 with a desktop research project in seven European countries. The results from this latest project form the heart of this paper. The information is organised into tables that describe and analyse the main features of the quality control systems of the countries (e.g. scope, focus and main characteristics of the procedures and quality demands on building professionals).

Several similar trends can be recognised in the quality control systems of the various European Union (EU) countries. Quality control is getting more and more privatised and the control framework is setting checks and balances throughout the construction process. Other findings are that scope and focus of the statutory control is unbalanced. Within the control processes emphasis is put on the safety aspects of complex constructions. Far fewer demands are made on the quality of the builders. Re-orientation of the building regulatory framework seems to be needed.

The paper only focusses on European countries where private quality control is established and on selected topics. The findings are based on desktop research and not on the practical experiences of the stakeholders involved in the countries studied.

The paper draws some important recommendations for policymakers in the building regulatory field. It suggests both an enhancement of the effectiveness of the quality control procedure as well as the commitment of builders to comply with the regulations.

The quality of constructions is essential for the wellbeing and safety of its users, its occupants or its visitors. This applies to the whole range of quality aspects: structural- and fire safety, health, sustainability and usability aspects. The analyses and recommendations of this paper aim to contribute to an improvement of the overall construction quality.

The paper makes an original contribution to the (limited) literature that is available in this field. The results can be used to situate the quality control systems of each member state within the EU, to assess the main trends, and it can be used as a guide to develop strategic choices on possible improvements in each country.

The purpose of this study is to identify the factors relating to the integration and compliance of Building Control (Amendment) Regulations 2014 (BC(A)R 2014) in large Irish construction organisations.

To achieve the aim, a mixed method approach is adopted, initially, providing a critique of the literature review, followed by a combination of 7 semi-structured interviews and 30 questionnaires from industry practitioners.

Findings demonstrate that BC(A)R has had a significant positive effect on the industry, eliminating previous bad practice, by increasing the accountability for professionals signing-off on new buildings, and highlights the emphasis on certification in successfully achieving practical completion on projects.

The findings provide further justification on the need for compliance, and integration, of BC(A)R in the Irish construction sector, offering further evidence, where needed, on the benefit of its adoption.

The originality and value of this research lies in the limited number of studies in the area, particularly in the context of large Irish construction projects, which this study aims to fulfil.

Higher education institutions are the citadel of knowledge and are heavily involved in formulating building regulations and building infrastructure designs that must conform to the building regulations. The study aims to identify university infrastructures compliant with disabled access from the perspective of the built environment students in Ghanaian universities.

Questionnaire surveys were administered to 500 built environment students across ten technical universities in Ghana with a total population of 3066; 341 were expected based on the formula used. However, upon several reminders, 176 responded. Data collected were analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences.

The findings show that all university facilities are not fully compliant with disabled access. Structures found to be least compliant are the laboratories, canteens, hall of residence, toilet facilities, football fields, places of worship and transport stations. The facilities with high compliance are the administration block, library, hospital building, lecture halls, department offices and ATM areas. The leading causes for this non-compliant are lack of enforcement of the building regulations, low level of disabled students’ enrolment, age of the building, lack of knowledge and poor building designs.

Compliance with disabled access makes universities world class and creates safe learning spaces for individuals with disabilities, enforcing the right to education for all individuals, particularly those with disabilities. Lack of compliance with disabled access will hamper the full utilisation of these facilities, thereby affecting quality education delivery to people with disabilities.

The findings are essential to the Ghanaian built environment, the lives of disabled individuals and universities. The results provide knowledge on areas of improvement for complete access to structures and facilities by disabled individuals.

The current fire protection measures in buildings do not account for all contemporary fire hazard issues, which has made fire safety a growing concern. Therefore, this paper aims to present a critical review of current fire protection measures and their applicability to address current challenges relating to fire hazards in buildings.

To overcome fire hazards in buildings, impact of fire hazards is also reviewed to set the context for fire protection measures. Based on the review, an integrated framework for mitigation of fire hazards is proposed. The proposed framework involves enhancement of fire safety in four key areas: fire protection features in buildings, regulation and enforcement, consumer awareness and technology and resources advancement. Detailed strategies on improving fire safety in buildings in these four key areas are presented, and future research and training needs are identified.

Current fire protection measures lead to an unquantified level of fire safety in buildings, provide minimal strategies to mitigate fire hazard and do not account for contemporary fire hazard issues. Implementing key measures that include reliable fire protection systems, proper regulation and enforcement of building code provisions, enhancement of public awareness and proper use of technology and resources is key to mitigating fire hazard in buildings. Major research and training required to improve fire safety in buildings include developing cost-effective fire suppression systems and rational fire design approaches, characterizing new materials and developing performance-based codes.

The proposed framework encompasses both prevention and management of fire hazard. To demonstrate the applicability of this framework in improving fire safety in buildings, major limitations of current fire protection measures are identified, and detailed strategies are provided to address these limitations using proposed fire safety framework.

Fire represents a severe hazard in both developing and developed countries and poses significant threat to life, structure, property and environment. The proposed framework has social implications as it addresses some of the current challenges relating to fire hazard in buildings and will enhance overall fire safety.

The novelty of proposed framework lies in encompassing both prevention and management of fire hazard. This is unlike current fire safety improvement strategies, which focus only on improving fire protection features in buildings (i.e. managing impact of fire hazard) using performance-based codes. To demonstrate the applicability of this framework in improving fire safety in buildings, major limitations of current fire protection measures are identified and detailed strategies are provided to address these limitations using proposed fire safety framework. Special emphasis is given to cost-effectiveness of proposed strategies, and research and training needs for further enhancing building fire safety are identified.

Although, a number of initiatives have been taken after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami to institutionalise disaster risk reduction (DRR), gaps still exist in the Sri Lankan local government sector. Even after ten years, local governments are still struggling to overcome a number of challenges in relation to making resilience in the built environment. DRR has not yet been properly integrated into the local government system and, as a result, poses a significant challenge. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to discover the hindrances for local governments in creating disaster resilient built environment within cities and to propose ways of overcoming the identified limitations.

In total, 15 semi-structured interviews were conducted among experts from Sri Lanka who are involved in disaster management, local governments and built environment fields of study. The interviews were conducted with the intention of gaining expert knowledge pertaining to this field of study. The interviews were mainly designed to capture the current practices for instigating DRR initiatives within Sri Lanka, the role of local governments in creating a disaster resilient built environment and the associated challenges, and ways of overcoming such challenges to ensure an effective contribution to city resilience.

Primary data discovered 36 challenges along with some associated sub-challenges. The challenges were categorised under eight main themes: legal framework; lack of adequate tools, techniques and guidelines; human resource constraints; funding constraints; weaknesses in the internal systems and processes; weaknesses in the external systems; community engagement; and other challenges. The paper analyses these challenges in detail and proposes a set of recommendations to overcome the challenges in order to create disaster resilient built environments within cities.

The paper provides a descriptive analysis of how the Sri Lankan local government sector could overcome the underpinning challenges of contributing to disaster resilience in the built environment and no comparative studies were conducted with in other tsunami affected regions. Furthermore, the paper analyses partial findings of a broader research, which was aimed at developing a framework to empower local governments in creating a disaster resilient built environment.

The paper provides an extensive analysis of the challenges faced by local governments in contributing to the resilience of their built environment and proposes how these challenges could be overcome while making a worthwhile contribution to both theory and practice. Accordingly, the paper recommends major changes in policy and practice with respect to bringing local governments into DRR.

Building permitting is mostly a manual, labor intensive and time-consuming process. Initiatives for streamlining the process are not always helpful since they often fail to address the core problems within the process. A framework for modeling the permitting process can be useful to identify bottlenecks, core challenges and best practices. Hence, the authors aim to demonstrate and validate a previously suggested workflow for permit process modeling using the permitting process in Israel as a test case.

The authors implement qualitative expert interviews for data acquisition. The collected data are then processed for a qualitative data analysis. The results of the analysis are then validated using a focus group workshop in the field of building permits. In the test case the focus group consisted of Israeli experts.

The authors present a detailed overview of the as-is building permit process in Israel and the existing challenges. Through this test case, the authors found that the framework is applicable in different countries and that it can provide valuable insights into the core problems within the process. In addition, application of the same framework in different countries can provide comparable results that would allow the authors to identify best practices.

The major contribution of this work is the development and validation of a framework for building permitting process modeling which can be used to identify existing challenges and bottlenecks in the process. Implementing a structured and unified approach provides an opportunity to easily compare processes in different countries to identify best practices.

Studies showed that construction digitalisation could prevent or mitigate accidents rate on sites. Digitalisation applications may prevent or mitigate building project collapse (BPC) but with some encumbrances, especially in developing countries. There is a paucity of research on digital technologies application to prevent or mitigate BPC in Nigeria. Thus, the research aims to explore the perceived barriers that may hinder digital technologies from preventing or mitigating building collapse and recommend measures to improve technology applications during development.

The study is exploratory because of the unexplored approach. The researchers collected data from knowledgeable participants in digitalisation and building collapse in Nigeria. The research employed a phenomenology approach and analysed collected data via a thematic approach. The study achieved saturation at the 29th interviewee.

Findings show that lax construction digitalisation implementation, absence of regulatory framework, lax policy, unsafe fieldworkers' behaviours, absence of basic infrastructure, government attitude, hesitation to implement and high technology budget, especially in developing countries, are threats to curbing building collapse menace via digitalisation. The study identified technologies relevant to preventing or mitigating building collapse. Also, it proffered measures to prevent or mitigate building collapse via improved digital technology applications during development.

This research contributes to the construction digitalisation literature, especially in developing countries, and investigates the perceived barriers that may hinder digital technologies usage in preventing or mitigating building collapse in Nigeria.

The construction and operation of buildings is a major contributor to global energy demand, greenhouse gases emissions, resource depletion, waste generation, and associated environmental effects, such as climate change, pollution and habitat destruction. Despite its wide relevance, research on building-related environmental effects often fails to achieve global visibility and attention, particularly in premiere interdisciplinary journals – thus representing a major gap in the research these journals offer. In this article we review and reflect on the factors that are likely causing this lack of visibility for such a prominent research topic and emphasise the need to reconcile the construction and operational phases into the physical unity of a building, to contribute to the global environmental discourse using a lifecycle-based approach. This article also aims to act as a call for action and to raise awareness of this important gap. The evidence contained in the article can support institutional policies to improve the status quo and provide a practical help to researchers in the field to bring their work to wide interdisciplinary audiences.

The purpose of this paper is to re-test the determinant factors of the quality of financial statements and performance of the government by adding contextual factors, such as the personal factor, system/administrative factor and political factor, that may affect the quality of financial statement information and performance of the government. The personal factor is proxied to the competencies that affect the quality of financial statements and performance. The social administrative factor is proxied on the regulations and presentation of quality financial statements.

The analysis unit in this study was conducted at the organizational level. The research object was in the South Sulawesi Province. This was a descriptive and verificative research with a survey technique. Based on the objectives of the research, this is an explanatory study. The research method used was an explanatory survey with a quantitative approach. The population of this research was proxied to the Regional Unit Organization (Organisasi Perangkat Desa/OPD) which compiled the financial statements in the South Sulawesi Provincial Government and consisted of 803 units of local government agencies (Satuan Kerja Perangkat Daerah or SKPD). The purposive sampling technique was chosen under the following criteria: the regional government whose financial statement has been audited by the BPK, the regional government whose financial accountability report has been evaluated by Indonesia’s Agency for Financial, and Development Supervision (Badan Pengawasan Keuangan dan Pembangunan or BPKP). In line with the criteria mentioned above, the minimum samples required for 26 observations/indicators are 5 × 26 = 130 respondents. The sample size met the minimum sample requirement of five for each group (cell) (Hair et al., 2006, p. 112).

The personal factor “competence” affects the financial statements’ quality. The high personal factor “competence” will affect the high financial statements’ quality. The system/administration factor “regulation” affects the financial statement quality. The high system/administration factor “regulation” will affect the high financial statements’ quality. Political factors affect the financial statements’ quality. The high political factors will affect the high financial statements’ quality. The personal factor “competence” has no direct effect on the performance. The high personal factor “competence” will not affect the high or low of the performance. However, there is a significant indirect effect between the personal factor “competence” on performance through the financial statements’ quality, which means that the higher personal factor “competence” will lead to higher performance through financial statements’ quality. The system/administration factor “regulation” does not directly affect the performance. The high system/administration factor “regulation” will not affect the high or low of the performance. However there is a significant indirect effect between the system/administration factor “regulation” on performance through the financial statements’ quality which means that higher system/administration factor “regulation” will lead to higher performance through financial statements’ quality. The political factor does not directly affect the performance. The high political factors will not affect the high or low of the performance. However there is a significant indirect effect between political factors on performance through the financial statements’ quality which means that the higher political factor will lead to higher performance through the financial statements’ quality. Financial statements’ quality affects the performance. The high financial statements will affect the performance.

The research issues raised are the increasing public demands for the government services and accountability, while on the other hand, the government is faced with the report and financial quality that are below the expectation. This issue is a national strategic issue, leading this research to aim at providing guidelines that can help the regional government to formulate operational policies and strategies for the quality improvement of financial statement and performance of the regional government.