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This study aims to present the financial performance of companies and investment areas in the real estate investment trust (REIT) industry.

A fuzzy model for financial performance measurement (FM-FPM) was proposed through the collaboration of fuzzy axiomatic design (FAD) and fuzzy entropy weighting (FEW). For the data, financial ratios were used, and their importance and functional requirements were collected via a questionnaire survey.

The FM-FPM is a beneficial model to be used for a REIT industry based on the structured procedures of FAD and FEW techniques. It can be suitable to regularly evaluate the performance of REITs and their investment areas in financial means, especially in today’s turbulent business environment. The Turkish market that was considered to show the practical applicability of the FM-FPM demonstrated specifically that diversified real estate was found to rank first, followed by mixed-buildings, warehouses, shopping malls and hotels, respectively.

The FM-FPM can be employed for REIT industries in other countries and adapted to different industries. However, more respondents or a different set of criteria might lead to different outputs.

The FM-FPM may guide REIT managers and investors while making their decisions and controlling the performance of REITs and investment areas.

The FM-FPM may encourage low- and middle-income investors to make good use of their savings.

The research is first (1) to offer a FPM model in order to determine investable areas in a REIT industry and (2) to employ multiple criteria decision-making tools in order to measure the financial performance of individual companies and investment areas in a REIT industry.

Fall accidents can cause casualties and economic losses in the construction industry. Fall portents, such as loss of balance (LOB) and sudden sways, can result in fatal, nonfatal or attempted fall accidents. All of them are worthy of studying to take measures to prevent future accidents. Detecting fall portents can proactively and comprehensively help managers assess the risk to workers as well as in the construction environment and further prevent fall accidents.

This study focused on the postures of workers and aimed to directly detect fall portents using a computer vision (CV)-based noncontact approach. Firstly, a joint coordinate matrix generated from a three-dimensional pose estimation model is employed, and then the matrix is preprocessed by principal component analysis, K-means and pre-experiments. Finally, a modified fusion K-nearest neighbor-based machine learning model is built to fuse information from the x, y and z axes and output the worker's pose status into three stages.

The proposed model can output the worker's pose status into three stages (steady–unsteady–fallen) and provide corresponding confidence probabilities for each category. Experiments conducted to evaluate the approach show that the model accuracy reaches 85.02% with threshold-based postprocessing. The proposed fall-portent detection approach can extract the fall risk of workers in the both pre- and post-event phases based on noncontact approach.

First, three-dimensional (3D) pose estimation needs sufficient information, which means it may not perform well when applied in complicated environments or when the shooting distance is extremely large. Second, solely focusing on fall-related factors may not be comprehensive enough. Future studies can incorporate the results of this research as an indicator into the risk assessment system to achieve a more comprehensive and accurate evaluation of worker and site risk.

The proposed machine learning model determines whether the worker is in a status of steady, unsteady or fallen using a CV-based approach. From the perspective of construction management, when detecting fall-related actions on construction sites, the noncontact approach based on CV has irreplaceable advantages of no interruption to workers and low cost. It can make use of the surveillance cameras on construction sites to recognize both preceding events and happened accidents. The detection of fall portents can help worker risk assessment and safety management.

Existing studies using sensor-based approaches are high-cost and invasive for construction workers, and others using CV-based approaches either oversimplify by binary classification of the non-entire fall process or indirectly achieve fall-portent detection. Instead, this study aims to detect fall portents directly by worker's posture and divide the entire fall process into three stages using a CV-based noncontact approach. It can help managers carry out more comprehensive risk assessment and develop preventive measures.

Prefabricated construction is an innovative technique for decreasing carbon emissions in the construction industry. However, as the investors of housing projects, a majority of developers are unwilling to adopt prefabricated housing in practice. To promote prefabricated housing, this study aims to develop an integrated framework of fuzzy-decision making trial and evaluation laboratory (fuzzy-DEMATEL) and system dynamics (SD) to understand the underlying influencing mechanism of developers' willingness.

Through literature review, a total of 17 influencing factors were identified. Then, the interrelationships among the factors were evaluated by 10 experienced professionals, and the impacts given and received by each factor were further analyzed through fuzzy-DEMATEL. Based on the technology acceptance model (TAM), a SD model was developed to explore the influencing mechanism.

The major cause factors were identified, including mandatory implementation policies, economic incentive policies, environmental protection policies, component standardization and developers' economic strength. This group of factors was expected to be given priority attention in the case of limited resources. On the other hand, the results indicated that economic incentive policies and mandatory implementation policies could affect the developers' willingness via perceived usefulness, while the others mainly influenced perceived ease of use.

Little research has focused on the interrelationships among the influencing factors of developers' willingness to adopt prefabricated housing. This study contributed to understanding the mechanism of developers' willingness from a systematic view and providing the priority of influencing factors. Several strategies were proposed to improve the practical implementation of prefabricated housing development.

Poor municipal solid waste management is a major characteristic of urban development in Africa. In Ghana, local governments are mandated to ensure the collection, treatment and disposal of solid waste. However, this has been a herculean task for local governments in Ghana, owing to inadequate resources and weak technical capacities. This has prompted calls for, and actual involvement of the private sector through public-private partnerships (PPPs) in municipal solid waste management, particularly in the urban areas. This study aims to assess the roles, effectiveness and challenges of PPPs in urban waste management in the Sunyani municipality of Ghana.

Adopting a case study design, the study used a qualitative research approach to provide in-depth insights into PPPs in municipal solid waste management in the Sunyani municipality of Ghana. Therefore, key informant interviews and two focus group discussions were conducted.

The study revealed that some policies and actions of the local government (Assembly) do not positively facilitate the effective functioning of PPPs in municipal solid waste management. There is also lack of effective stakeholder consultation, collaboration and grassroot inclusion in the PPPs which affect the effective management of the increasing volumes of solid waste being generated within the municipality.

To achieve the objectives of the PPP arrangements, local authorities should initiate steps to effectively coordinate all the involved private companies. There must also be ways of involving the beneficiaries in the design and implementation of PPPs on waste management to allow for effective grassroots and participatory monitoring and evaluation.

The uniqueness of the case study being a mid-sized and secondary city in a developing country enhances the value of the findings and the application of recommendations in cities with similar characteristics and initiatives in improving PPPs in municipal waste management.

The application of three-dimensional (3D) printing technology in construction projects is of increasing interest to researchers and construction practitioners. Although the application of 3D printing technology at various stages of the project lifecycle has been explored, few studies have identified the relative importance of critical success factors (CSFs) for implementing 3D printing technology in construction projects. To address this research gap, this study aims to explore the academics (i.e. researchers) and construction practitioners’ perspectives on CSFs for implementing 3D printing technology in construction projects.

To do this, a questionnaire was administered to participants (i.e. academics and construction practitioners) with knowledge and expertise in 3D printing technology in construction projects. The collected data were analysed using mean score ranking, normalization and rank agreement analysis to identify CSFs and determine the consistency of the ranking of CSFs between academics and construction practitioners. In addition, exploratory factor analysis was used to identify the relationships and underlying constructs of the measured CSFs.

Through a rank agreement analysis of the collected data, 11 CSFs for implementing 3D printing technology were retrieved (i.e. 17% agreement), indicating a diverse agreement in the ranking of the CSFs between academics and construction practitioners. In addition, the results show three key components of CSFs including “production demand enabling CSFs”, “optimize the construction process enabling CSFs” and “optimized design enabling CSFs”.

This study highlights the feasibility of implementing the identified CSFs for 3D printing technology in construction projects, which not only serves as a reference for other researchers but also increases construction practitioners’ awareness of the practical benefits of implementing 3D printing technology in construction projects. Specifically, it would optimize the construction lifecycle processes, enhance digital transformation and promote sustainable construction projects.

The impact of building information modeling (BIM) on various aspects of project management has attracted much attention in the past decade. However, previous studies have focused on a particular facet of project management (e.g., safety, quality, facility management) and within identified target journals. Despite numerous existing studies, there is limited research on the mainstream research topics, gaps and future research directions on BIM in project management. This study aims to conduct a bibliometric and science mapping review of published articles on BIM in project management and to identify mainstream research topics, research gaps and future research directions in this domain.

A science mapping approach consisting of bibliometric search, scientometric analysis and qualitative discussion was used to analyze 521 journal articles that were retrieved from the Scopus database and related to BIM in project management. In the scientometric analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis and document analysis were performed. This was followed by a qualitative discussion that seeks to propose a framework summarizing the interconnection between the mainstream research topics, research gaps and future research directions.

Six mainstream research topics were found including (1) BIM-enabled advanced digital technologies, (2) BIM-based reinforcement and enhancement, (3) BIM and project composition, (4) BIM project elements and attributes, (5) BIM-based collaboration and communication and (6) BIM-based information and data. Moreover, this study discussed six research gaps, namely, (1) integration of BIM and other digital technologies, (2) future maturity of BIM applications in project management, (3) application of BIM in project components and processes, (4) role of BIM application in project elements and attributes, (5) impact of collaboration and communication in BIM application and (6) stability of information and data interaction. Furthermore, future research directions were discussed.

The findings and proposed framework contribute to providing a deeper understanding to researchers, policymakers and practitioners in the development of related research and practice in the domain of BIM in project management, thus, promoting digital transformation in project management. Overall, it adds to the global knowledge domain in BIM and promotes the need for digital and data integration, BIM maturity and BIM collaboration.

The construction industry (CI) has been identified as one of the most challenging sectors for stakeholders to achieve organizational success. Although previous studies had examined both organizational leadership (OL) and employee well-being (EWB) in the CI, a bibliometric and systematic analysis of published articles is hitherto lacking. Therefore, this paper aims to conduct a bibliometric and scientometric review of published articles related to OL and EWB in the CI between 2008 and 2022.

A three-step method consisting of a bibliometric analysis, a scientometric analysis and an in-depth discussion were used. A total of 1,114 articles met the inclusion criteria. All articles were retrieved from the Scopus database.

The results present an in-depth discussion of the research publication trends, keywords co-occurrence analysis, document analysis and countries/regions analysis. This review paper identified three main research gaps in OL and EWB in the CI, namely, project management, technology innovation and people orientation. It also proposes “OL-EWB in the CI”' mechanisms and a theoretical framework to guide future research directions.

This review paper theoretically fills the gap in the lack of research summarizing OL and EWB in the CI and provides research gaps and trends for achieving a win-win situation for both companies and employees.

Design for safety (DfS), also known as prevention through design (PtD), is a concept that mitigates accidents and hazards through considerations during the design stage of building projects. The literature provides much information on this concept, but such information is only limited to a few developed countries such as the UK, the USA and Australia. There is limited insight into DfS implementation in the construction industry of several countries, including countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) such as Kuwait. Therefore, this study investigates DfS implementation among design professionals in the Kuwait construction industry.

The study used a questionnaire survey to obtain data from design professionals. The data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics (i.e. analysis of variance and t-test).

The results revealed that DfS awareness among design professionals is very high; there is a very high willingness among design professionals to apply the concept, and design professionals generally view DfS implementation as important. Despite these, the frequency of implementation of DfS practices is generally moderate. In addition, the results revealed that though there is a high interest in DfS training among the design professionals, their actual engagement in training is low. The results also suggest some association between the frequency of engagement in the DfS practices and designers' DfS awareness, training and education. DfS related regulations, industry guidance, formal education and training are considered by design professionals to have the greatest influence on DfS implementation in Kuwait.

These emerging findings both mirror and contradict aspects of the outcomes of previous DfS studies in other countries. Furthermore, the findings from this study provide insights into a less investigated area regarding work-related health and safety in the GCC region. It offers new and additional information and insights into the current state-of-the-art DfS implementation in the construction industry in Kuwait. In view of the findings, joined-up efforts by government, industry and academia are needed to enhance DfS implementation by design professionals in Kuwait.

Concrete workers perform physically demanding work in awkward postures, exposing their backs to musculoskeletal disorders. Back-support exoskeletons are promising ergonomic interventions designed to reduce the risks of back disorders. However, the suitability of exoskeletons for enhancing performance of concrete workers has not been largely explored. This study aims to assess a passive back-support exoskeleton for concrete work in terms of the impact on the body, usability and benefits of the exoskeleton, and potential design modifications.

Concrete workers performed work with a passive back-support exoskeleton. Subjective and qualitative measures were employed to capture their perception of the exoskeleton, at the middle and end of the work, in terms of discomfort to their body parts, ease of use, comfort, performance and safety of the exoskeleton, and their experience using the exoskeleton. These were analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis.

The exoskeleton reduced stress on the lower back but caused discomfort to other body parts. Significant correlations were observed between perceived discomfort and usability measures. Design modifications are needed to improve the compatibility of the exoskeleton with the existing safety gears, reduce discomfort at chest and thigh, and improve ease of use of the exoskeleton.

The study was conducted with eight concrete workers who used the exoskeleton for four hours.

This study contributes to existing knowledge on human-wearable robot interaction and provides suggestions for adapting exoskeleton designs for construction work.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to present a rigorous bibliometric analysis and a systematic literature review of the critical success factors (CSFs) for Building information modelling (BIM)-based digital transformation; second, to identify the relationship between the dimensions in favour of BIM implementation.

This study adopts a two-step approach to combine bibliometric and systematic literature review to explore the research topic of BIM and CSFs. Bibliometric tools such as Biblioshiny in R language and Ucinet software were applied to this study.

Besides identifying the two most influential authors (e.g. Bryde and Antwi-Afari), the key journal for disseminating articles, and the most influential countries in this discourse (e.g. Hong Kong and Australia), the study also identifies four pivotal research themes derived from the co-occurrence analysis of keywords: the fusion of sustainability and technology with BIM; practical application and its integration within construction management; innovation and engineering paradigms; and the advent of emerging technologies (e.g. Blockchain) within developing nations. Additionally, the paper introduces a comprehensive framework for selecting CSFs pertinent to BIM-centred digital transformation as viewed through the lens of dynamic capabilities.

This paper establishes a link between dynamic capabilities theory, CSFs, and BIM dimensions, presenting a multifaceted framework guiding future paths and offering practical insights for managerial and political decision-makers engaged in digital transformation endeavours. The study positions dynamic capabilities as pivotal, aligning digital technologies with continuous business performance, and advocates for a strategic focus on digital transformation.