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The aim of this paper is to identify the business barriers that influence cost of implementing unmanned aerial system (UAS) and its suitability for a decentralised system. UAS, or drone, plays a role of data provider to architectural, engineering and construction professionals within a decentralised system. However, the expectations in the execution and test of the effectiveness of the UAS is often not met. The reasons for these fails are not well elaborated in the literature. Hence, the study investigates the barriers and cost analysis of UAS that can be used for a decentralised case, in which the UAS data are useful for multiple stakeholders, and provide illustration of the interactions within this approach.

This paper is part of a longitudinal project by using a qualitative method of interviewing 24 participants involved in the process of application of drones in the country of the Dominican Republic. The open-ended semi-structured interviews were composed for questions regarding the application of UAS, barriers and business implications. The data gathered were transcribed and used thematic analysis for its interpretation. Later, conclusions of the barriers of UAS implementation in the organisation were analysed and a cost model was developed to identify a viable scenario.

The paper provides empirical insights about the barriers and economic considerations faced in the implementation process of UAS. In this research, 16 barriers in the implementation process at the management level, 8 types of cases of business relationships and 13 business models were identified. Furthermore, recommendations were made about being the accountability of the dimensions and recurrent visits to the projects handled by the portfolio of the organisations.

Blockchain system is supported by UAS data and its tests require skills and resources that were outside of the scope of the main research intend regarding UAS implementation in construction. Furthermore, as these technologies are still under development, the assessment of the decentralised system, smart contract and swarm technology was addressed conceptually and further research are encouraged in this field.

The paper includes barriers to consider before implementation, business implications, project examples and cost structure developed. Furthermore, the findings are fit theoretically into the context of a decentralised system. It was understood and contemplated that monitoring in open and outdoor spaces is the suitable approach for UAS implementations for decentralised system. The trend of decentralised autonomous organisations for transparency and efficiency of human tasks provides the foundations of human–robot interactions as well as the role of tokenisation of assets into the cyberspace. Therefore, the paper brings managers and technicians the implications for the future-proofing the implementation of UAS.

This paper provides an overview of the implications of cost and the suitable scenarios for return of investment in the UAS implementation in the current stage of the technology development. In addition, the paper makes reference to decentralised systems, smart contracts and swarm technology as options in which reality capture technologies are essential for construction projects.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected around 216 countries and territories worldwide and more than 2000 cities in India, alone. The smart cities mission (SCM) in India started in 2015 and 100 smart cities were selected to be initiated with a total project cost of INR 2031.72 billion. Smart city strategies play an important role in implementing the measures adopted by the government such as the issuance of social distancing regulations and other COVID-19 mitigation strategies. However, there is no research reported on the role of smart cities strategies in managing the COVID-19 outbreak in developing countries.

This paper aims to address the research gap in smart cities, technology and healthcare management through a review of the literature and primary data collected using semi-structured interviews.

Each city is unique and has different challenges, the study revealed six key findings on how smart cities in India managed the COVID-19 outbreak. They used: Integrated Command and Control Centres, Artificial Intelligence and Innovative Application-based Solutions, Smart Waste Management Solutions, Smart Healthcare Management, Smart Data Management and Smart Surveillance.

This paper contributes to informing policymakers of key lessons learnt from the management of COVID-19 in developing countries like India from a smart cities’ perspective. This paper draws on the six Cs for the implications directed to leaders and decision-makers to rethink and act on COVID-19. The six Cs are: Crisis management leadership, Credible communication, Collaboration, Creative governance, Capturing knowledge and Capacity building.

The anticipated strong growth of the infrastructure industry over the coming decades will require more modern, digital approaches to create data-centric infrastructure that allows infrastructure to be monitored and managed throughout its lifecycle. Digital twins (DTs) are currently at an early stage in terms of their implementation on infrastructure projects across the United Kingdom (UK). The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the current uptake of DTs in delivering infrastructure sector projects and how DTs can help contribute towards strengthening the industry.

A systematic literature review approach has been conducted with the research questions derived from the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) article screening tool. In addition to this, inclusion and exclusion criteria have been used to screen irrelevant information and help streamline research documents. Following a screening of relevant information, 36 pieces of literature were reviewed in order to identify the key drivers, barriers, enabling technologies and use cases.

DTs have the potential to transform asset design, production and maintenance. However, to further advance the digital innovation in the UK infrastructure sector, further study is necessary. An emerging technology must be considered on a broader scale than just its technical aspects, particularly when it comes to DTs. With enabling technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), sensors and artificial intelligence (AI), the uptake of DTs appears promising. While current literature indicates that DTs offer clear benefits in the infrastructure sector, the uptake is low and hindered by both technical and non-technical challenges.

This paper provides a rich insight into the understanding and awareness of the DTs in delivering infrastructure sector projects and how the infrastructure sector has evolved in order to develop new ways of designing, constructing, operating and monitoring infrastructure assets. This study contributes towards informing leaders in the sector of the current uptake of DTs within the UK's infrastructure sector as well as how DTs can contribute towards strengthening the industry.

The construction industry is famous for gender imbalance and reluctance in initiating change. In recent years, construction is becoming an attractive career choice for women. However, this change has been gradual. The purpose of this research was to understand the challenges women are facing in construction sector after a decade of implementation of the Equality Act 2010 in the UK and how women in the sector feel the industry could be further improved. This research investigated real-life experiences to identify where the industry needs to make viable improvements.

A qualitative research methodology was adopted. In total, 31 semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data, which was then analysed using content analysis for inference and conclusion.

This research revealed that women still experience adversity forcing them to work harder than usual to prove their belonging in construction sector. The “man’s world” culture is still widespread. However, women have seen improvements over recent years but believe more can be done from an intersectionality perspective. This is pertinent due to the Brexit and Covid-19 situation.

The study contributes to the field of equality and diversity in the construction sector. Women believe that factors such as bespoke initiatives, equal pay, flexible working hours (considering childcare and caring responsibilities), mental health and well-being support, and equality and diversity policies will enable the construction sector to create conducive environment for women now and in the future.

Policymakers are developing national strategic plans to encourage organizations to adopt Construction 4.0 technologies. However, organizations often adopt the recommended technologies without aligning with organizational vision. Furthermore, there is no prioritization on which Construction 4.0 technology should be adopted, including the impact of the technologies on different criteria such as safety and health. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate Construction 4.0 technologies listed in a national strategic plan that targets the enhancement of safety and health.

A list of Construction 4.0 technologies from a national strategic plan is evaluated using the fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method. Then, the data are analyzed using reliability, fuzzy TOPSIS, normalization, Pareto, sensitivity, ranking and correlation analyses.

The analyses identified six Construction 4.0 technologies that are critical in enhancing safety and health: Internet of Things, autonomous construction, big data and predictive analytics, artificial Intelligence, building information modeling and augmented reality and virtualization. In addition, six pairs of Construction 4.0 technologies illustrate strong relationships.

This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by ranking a list of Construction 4.0 technologies in a national strategic plan that targets the enhancement of safety and health. Decision-makers can use the study findings to prioritize the technologies during the adoption process. Also, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to evaluate the impact of Construction 4.0 technologies listed in a national strategic plan on a specific criterion.

Effective safety communication facilitates the sharing of relevant knowledge that helps to improve safety behaviours, such as superior hazard identification and compliance. This study aims to explore channels by which construction companies can effectively communicate health and safety (H&S) among communities of their operations.

Based on a quantitative research approach, this study addressed the knowledge gap through a cross-sectional survey of 250 contractors (comprising 155 building and 95 road contractors) involved in various projects in the Ghanaian construction industry. These contractors were selected by using a stratified simple random sampling technique. Data obtained from the survey was analysed through descriptive (i.e. frequencies, mean and standard deviation) and inferential (i.e. exploratory factor analysis) statistical analyses.

The findings from the mean scores revealed that all the 12 communication channels identified in the literature, confirmed through piloting and examined by the respondents, were important channels through which construction companies can effectively communicate H&S amongst communities of their operations. The exploratory factor analysis revealed a clustering of the 12 channels of communication into 5 components: “safety demonstration in the community”; “social media”; “mass media”; “community engagement”; and “opinion leaders”.

This study offers construction project managers the means of managing one of the major stakeholders of a construction project (the community). It provides an actionable opportunity that can be leveraged strategically to integrate community members into projects to promote synergy and local content inclusion while gaining a peaceful atmosphere to achieve their project goals.

Practically, this study provides construction project managers with a means of managing one of the major stakeholders of a construction project (the community) and also demonstrates the integration of community members into projects to promote synergy and local content inclusion. This would give construction organisations a peaceful atmosphere to accomplish their project objectives.

The social implication of this study is that the study offers society a means of creating safer Ghanaian communities by offering them the knowledge of identifying hazards and avoiding risky behaviours, creating a good safety atmosphere in these communities.

This study presents construction organisations with a unique opportunity to transfer and share novel external knowledge within a different social system (the community). It contributes to the state-of-the-art knowledge in H&S communication by providing channels through which H&S can be communicated in a developing country such as Ghana.

This paper aims to study the reaction of construction project managers in coping with workforce productivity challenges that arise from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Quantitative research via questionnaires targeting the project managers from G7 contractor companies in Malaysia was carried out in the data collection process. In total, 182 responses have been analysed descriptively and inferentially using SPSS software.

The research discovers that most of the construction projects and their workforce productivity were adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Besides, the strategies adopted by project managers in Malaysia and the ranking of strategies based on their effectiveness were indicated.

The findings of this research have contributed to a new understanding of the construction workforce productivity during the COVID-19 era from the perspective of project managers in Malaysia. A guideline established from the ranking of strategies would be useful to ensure the survival of the industry in Malaysia aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Work–family conflict (WFC) is rife among construction professionals, leading to a significant negative impact on their work engagement. Building on an extant body of research, this study provides nuanced insights into the link between WFC, work–life balance (WLB) and work engagement and identifies the boundary conditions of these relationships.

Data were collected from 257 dyads of construction professionals and their immediate supervisors from a sample of five construction firms based in India using an online survey.

The results found that WLB mediates the relationship between WFC and work engagement, and the relationship is controlled by professionals' gender and perceptions of psychological contract breach (PCB). An important finding is that PCB accentuates the negative influence of WFC on work engagement via WLB. The study also reveals that the negative impact of WFC on WLB is stronger for women.

The findings are relevant for construction firms since they are primarily dominated by men and continue to struggle to attract more women professionals. The study insights provide avenues to expand existing research on the relationship between WFC and work engagement and offer managerial implications for improving construction professionals' work engagement in the high-pressure context of the construction industry.

The study significantly advances the underdeveloped literature on work–family interface, especially in the unique work settings of the construction industry, by establishing WFC as a predictor and revealing how engagement at work is affected. It highlights the importance of boundary conditions such as gender and PCB. It is one of the first to assess the relationship between WFC, WLB, PCB and work engagement among construction professionals in India.

The purpose of this paper is to quantify the evolutionary mechanism of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) impact on international construction multi-projects.

From three concepts of complexity, stressor and detractor risks, a multi-project simulation model under COVID-19 outbreak is proposed to study the characteristics of contingency with three peaks of ordered and disordered states. Specially, COVID-19 brings forth mitigation fee, epidemic prevention fee, holdup fee and schedule delay fee of multi-projects. By integrating parametric model, Monte Carlo and chaos theory, a comparative analysis of its contingency with or without COVID-19 is conducted. Summarizing the simulated results, their total contingencies at certain risk tolerance are obtained at two status of static at one-time point and dynamic over time. Meanwhile, some major risks including detractors, complexities and stressors are screened out for mitigation, especially for epidemic prevention and control. Eventually, the real case is illustrated to demonstrate its validity.

It provides a quantitative analysis framework for the impact of epidemic, a once-in-a-century black swan event with a long tail, on construction multi-projects.

It conduct an effective model to quantify impacts of COVID-19 on international construction multi-projects for implementing effective counter-measures, which lay foundation for claims among different stakeholders.

The term of detractor risk is applied to describe COVID-19 and quantify its impact upon international construction multi-projects. Further, a hybrid model by integrating parametric model and Monte Carlo in type I/II model is proposed to simulate their contingencies at disordered states. Finally, the simulated outcomes of these models are used to guide effective risk control to meet the requirements by the client.

This study attempts to analyse and rank the impact of work-related issues arising within the Indian construction industry in the context of the existing pandemic. Furthermore, this is the first attempt to provide strategies to overcome issues among a workforce that is highly contractual in nature and is currently witnessing the uncertainties of the pandemic's aftermath. To the best of the author's knowledge, few studies have highlighted the combined analysis of job insecurity, psychological stress and emotional exhaustion in the Indian construction industry.

The “Best Worst Methodology” (BWM) has been used in this study to analyse and rank the key factors that eliminate negative characteristics among contractual construction employees. The BWM, outlined by Rezaei (2015, 2016), is a popular “multi-criteria decision analysis technique” due to its advantage of consistent results and lesser pairwise data requirements.

The study identified and ranked the socioeconomic impact of the three waves of the COVID-19 pandemic on construction sector employees in the Indian subcontinent. The results indicate that job insecurity has the most prominent impact, which ultimately produces psychological stress and emotional exhaustion among employees.

To achieve the objective of identifying and prioritising the criteria of adverse socioeconomic impacts during the pandemic and outlining plans of action for the construction industry, ten experts (civil engineers/managers) from ten different construction projects were involved in a mixed-method case study, which has never been explored in the Indian construction sector.