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Urban communities can be faced with many destructive events that can disrupt the daily functioning of activities and livelihood of people living in the communities. In this regard, during the last couple of years, many governments have put a lot of efforts into building resilient urban communities. Essentially, a resilient urban community has the capacity to anticipate future disasters, prepare for and recover timely from adverse effects of disasters and unexpected circumstances. Considering this, it is therefore important for the need to continuously review the existing urban community resilience indicators, in order to identify emerging ones to enable comprehensive evaluation of urban communities in the future against unexpected events. This study therefore aims to conduct a systematic review to develop and critically analyse the emerging and leading urban community resilience indicators.

Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRSIMA) protocol, 53 journal articles were selected using Scopus. The selected papers were subjected to thorough content analysis.

From the review, 45 urban community resilience indicators were identified. These indicators were grouped into eight broad categories namely, Socio-demographic, Economic, Institutional Resilience, Infrastructure and Housing Resilience, Collaboration, Community Capital, Risk Data Accumulation and Geographical and Spatial characteristics of community. Further, the results indicated that the U.S had the highest number of publications, followed by Australia, China, New Zealand and Taiwan. In fact, very few studies emanated from developing economies.

The outputs of this study will inform policymakers, practitioners and researchers on the new and emerging indicators that should be considered when evaluating the resilience level of urban communities. The findings will also serve as a theoretical foundation for further detailed empirical investigation.

Critical infrastructures (CIs) are essential components of the built environment. They ensure the interconnectivity and good operability of any major urban environment. CIs are exposed to several disruptions such as natural events, hazards or threats that may disturb their normal functionality. These disruptions may impact societies not only from a socio-economic perspective but also environmentally. Therefore, ensuring the resilience of CIs is crucial to modern cities. This paper aims to explore the main standards and criteria used to assess the resilience of CIs.

A three-stage systematic review process was adopted to retrieve relevant papers. A total of 44 papers were carefully selected, and the content analysis technique was used to thoroughly analyse the papers.

Results show that researchers’ interest to investigate the assessment criteria of CIs resilience increased after 2004. Further, a total of 28 resilience criteria of CIs were identified, of which the most reported ones are organisational resilience; performance loss, disruption and recovery process; resilience metrics and index; safety, security and risk analysis; societies/communities’ resilience and/or social-equity responsibility; dynamic networks connectivity; resilience through design and structural integrity; and economic resilience.

The findings of this research will serve as a solid foundation for the development of hypothesis for future empirical studies into the development of assessment criteria index for CI resilience. Further, the outcomes will contribute to the ongoing international discussions and debate on the appropriate ways to develop CI resilience.

Public–private partnership (PPP) has been adopted in many areas especially within the architecture, engineering and construction research domain. However, the PPP in critical infrastructure resilience (CIR) has not received the needed attention even though it has been acclaimed to be the panacea for building infrastructure resilience. This paper aims to adopt a systematic review to proactively identify the risks factors that pertains to using PPP as a mechanism to build the resilience of critical infrastructure.

Using a systematic methodology, a total record of 51 academic publications and 5 institutional reports from reputable organizations were identified and analyzed.

The selected literature was subjected to content analysis to retrieve 46 risk factors in PPP in CIR. The outcome of the systematic revealed the topmost risks as corruption, natural and unavoidable catastrophes, wars, terrorism, sabotage, cost overrun issues, a lack of centralized mechanism for coordinating integrated actions, inconsistent government policies, inadequate supervision, high operational cost due to robust and redundant measure, lack of supporting infrastructure, lack of open and integrated communication, unstable government, political interference, lack of PPP experience and legislation change. A conceptual framework was developed by grouping the identified risks under 13 categories.

The outcome of this study will be a guide for decision makers and stakeholders with the responsibility of building the resilience of critical infrastructure.

The study contributes to CIR research area by providing an in-depth knowledge on risks that are inherent in PPP in CIR.

This paper aims to examine the factors that drive the career progression of construction project managers (CPM) in the Ghanaian construction industry.

Based on the quantitative approach, the views of 80 CPMs working with D1 building construction firms were elicited using a structured questionnaire. Data was analysed using one-sample t-test, which was used to examine the relative significance of the variables. The mean scores, standard deviations and significance values (p-values) of each variable were used to examine the outcome of the survey.

The findings suggest that “existence of organizational support systems”, “ability to create identity”, “having an influential mentor and coach”, “accepting complicated and high visibility assignments” and “ability to gain managerial or leadership experience” are the key factors that drive the career progression of CPMs in Ghana.

Findings from this study is limited to CPMs, specifically within the Ghanaian construction industry. This implies that with the fragmented nature of the construction industry, adopting these findings in construction settings within other countries may not yield the desired results, especially, if those countries do not share similar characteristics and context with Ghana.

Practically, this study highlights for the benefits of project managers (PM) (especially those in the construction industry) the key factors that drive their career progressions. Identification of these drivers offers the professionals with those factors to be prioritized when seeking to progress their careers in the construction industry.

Empirical research on the factors that drive the career progression of CPMs has not been fully examined in previous studies, though such studies in other sectors aside construction are prevalent. Hence, the identification of the drivers for career progression of construction PMs advances literature in the area and offers the professionals with those factors to be prioritized when seeking to progress their careers.

This paper aims to identify the key barriers to the adoption of green certification of buildings in Ghana.

The study adopts face-to-face and telephonic interviews with ten built environment professionals, using a semi-structured interview guide. Qualitative responses to the interview were thematically analysed using NVivo 11 Pro analysis application software.

The findings suggest that “lack of information on existing green buildings”, “lack of incentives”, “conservative nature of Ghanaians”, “lack of active government participation”, “inadequate human resource”, “lack of awareness of the benefits”, “cost and financing” and “lack of legal backing” are the eight key barriers that hinder the adoption of green certification of buildings.

The research is limited to built environment professionals registered with their appropriate professional bodies. The findings cannot be generalized and extended to other developing countries that do not share similar characteristics and context with Ghana.

Practically, this study highlights, for the benefit of the construction industry and the government, the critical barriers to the adoption of green certification of buildings in Ghana. Identification of these barriers provides a pathway for the provision of pragmatic solutions towards the adoption of green buildings in Ghana.

Findings of the research make significant contribution to the debate on the barriers to the adoption of green certification of buildings. Four out of the eight barriers (inadequate awareness of the benefits of green certification of buildings, inadequate human resource, conservative nature of Ghanaian and lack of information on existing green buildings) identified are unique in the context of other related studies and advanced knowledge on the subject matter.

Sustainability has become a topical issue in many countries, with emphasis on green buildings. Though Ghana has recently adopted green buildings, there is lack of its speedy implementation. There is little literature on the adoption of green certification of buildings, especially in a developing country like Ghana. The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors that drive the adoption of green certification of buildings in Ghana.

The study adopts face-to-face and telephone interviews, using a semi-structured interview guide among ten built environment professionals. Qualitative responses to the interview are thematically analysed using Nvivo 11 Pro analysis application software.

The findings suggest that “observability of the benefits of green certified buildings”, “commitment of Government to green building initiatives”, “incorporating green certification of buildings into the code of practice of professional bodies”, “green building certification incentives”, “public acknowledgement of the green building concept”, “policies and regulations to enforce the adoption of the concept” and “effective communication and source of information on the concept” are the factors that drive the adoption of green certification of buildings in Ghana.

The paper contributes to the understanding of the factors that drive the adoption of green building certification in Ghana. With these findings, stakeholders and industry practitioners can make informed decisions regarding how they can put in place strategies to ensure the effective adoption of green certification of buildings. Though this study was conducted within the context of Ghana, its findings and implications can be useful to policy makers, stakeholders and practitioners in other developing countries.

In the Ghanaian construction industry (GCI), the option for stakeholders to adopt formwork design as a building construction requirement is uncommon place. This is due to the low level of awareness and practice of formwork design. As a result of this, there have been formwork accidents, cost and time overruns in construction. This paper aims to solicit the view of stakeholders on the awareness of formwork design practices in the GCI.

This paper adopted the interpretivism research philosophy and inductive reasoning. Through a semi-structured interview guide, data was collected. The data (interview) recorded was transcribed using the Amberscript web application. This study used thematic analysis in analyzing the data collected using Nvivo 10 software.

The data collected from the 22 professionals indicated that the respondents were unaware of the concept of formwork design and its practice, neither could they speak to the existence of any specific regulation nor code of practice. However, the respondents established that there was a need to design formwork and stated some benefits of it.

From the literature, little research has been done on formwork design and its context in the GCI is yet to be explored. This research attempts to fill this gap. The findings indicate that to practice formwork design, there must be education and training of human resources for formwork design, there must be a code of practice to guide the design process and legal backing through policies and regulations to mandate the design.