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In the quest for better construction workforce management, this chapter explored the background of workforce management and related theories, models, and practices. Through a review, the chapter provided meaning to the concept of construction and workforce management. The chapter concluded that while the construction industry worldwide is important to the economic growth of the countries where it operates, the industry’s management of its workforce is challenged by several problems. These problems include the nature of the industry, skill shortage, unhealthy working environment, and poor image of the industry, among others. Also, while the construction industry is rich in diversity, this has been a major source of problems for workforce management. The chapter further revealed that to improve workforce management and attain better-performing construction organisations, careful recruitment, effective training, providing a safe working environment, putting policies to promote diversity, and ensuring innovativeness, among others, are essential.

The current era of the fourth industrial revolution has attracted significant research on the use of digital technologies in improving construction project delivery. However, less emphasis has been placed on how these digital tools will influence the management of the construction workforce. To this end, using a review of existing works, this chapter explores the fourth industrial revolution and its associated technologies that can positively impact the management of the construction workforce when implemented. Also, the possible challenges that might truncate the successful deployment of digital technologies for effective workforce management were explored. The chapter submitted that implementing workforce management-specific digital platforms and other digital technologies designed for project delivery can aid effective workforce management within construction organisations. Technologies such as cloud computing, the Internet of Things, big data analytics, robotics and automation, and artificial intelligence, among others, offer significant benefits to the effective workforce management of construction organisations. However, several challenges, such as resistance to change due to fear of job loss, cost of investment in digital tools, organisational structure and culture, must be carefully considered as they might affect the successful use of digital tools and by extension, impact the success of workforce management in the organisations.

This book aimed to conceptualise a construction workforce management model suitable for effectively managing workers in construction organisations. To this end, this chapter presents the conceptualised model, which consists of seven workforce management practices with their respective measurement variables. Drawing from existing theories, models, and practices, the chapter concludes that a construction organisation that will attain its strategic objectives in the current fourth industrial revolution era must be willing to promote effective recruitment and selection, compensation and benefits, performance management and appraisal, employee involvement and empowerment, training and development, as well as improving workers emotional intelligence and handling external environment pressure. These practices can promote proactiveness, participation, and improved skills and can lead to effective commitment, better quality, and flexibility within the organisation.

The construction business is widely recognised for its inherent complexity and dynamic nature, which stems from the nature of the job involved. The industry is often regarded as one of the most challenging industries globally in terms of implementing environmental, health and safety (EHS) practices. However, in the absence of EHS, the construction industry cannot be considered sustainable. Therefore, this study aims to identify the trends, knowledge gaps and implications of EHS research to enhance construction activities and knowledge.

The study adopted a science mapping approach involving bibliometric and scientometric analysis of 407 construction EHS publications from the Scopus database with the VOSviewer software. The study is based on journal articles from the Scopus database without restriction to any time range.

The main focus of construction EHS research identified in the study includes sustainability-related studies, risk-related, environmental issues, EHS management, integrated management systems studies, health and safety related and EHS in the construction process. Some emerging areas also identified include productivity, design, culture, social sustainability and machine learning. The most influential and productive publication sources, countries/regions and EHS publications with the highest impact were also determined.

Documents published in the Scopus database were considered for analysis because of the wider coverage of the database. Journal articles written in English language represent the inclusion criteria, whereas other documents were excluded from the analysis. The study also limited the search to articles with the engineering subject area.

The research findings will enlighten stakeholders and practitioners on the focal knowledge areas in the EHS research domain, which are vital for enhancing EHS in the industry.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this review-based study is the first attempt to internationally conduct a science mapping on extant literature in the EHS research domain through bibliometric and scientometric assessments.

Creativity and productivity are important factors for corporate and government institutions in the COVID-19 era. As a result, there is an urgent need to ensure that construction projects can recover adequately to survive potential surges or even potential epidemics. Therefore, this study aims to explore social capital by examining the effect/impact of knowledge creation on construction performance in the COVID-19 era.

A simple random sampling approach focused on Ghanaian construction firms was used. Completed responses were obtained and analyzed from employees who had tasks on sites. SmartPLS 3.3.3 and Statistical Package for Social Sciences v. 26 was used.

One key finding from this research was that construction firms with solid social capital built by their management staff are more connected and have better adaptive systems than firms with low capital. A company’s development programs must concentrate not only on the development of targeted or selective know-how and professional abilities but also on capacity creating, collaboration and knowledge creation and sharing among its employees.

Using this study’s findings, construction professionals can develop successful solutions to the COVID-19 epidemic and future emergencies. Additionally, the comprehensive exposition of the implications, constraints and preventive methods in this study may enable scholars to discover current gaps in the literature and investigate other elements of the pandemic’s influence on the construction industry.

Previous studies have established to a great extent that regulatory frameworks and, in particular, procurement approaches – that are common in a particular context – have a major impact on the success of building information modelling (BIM) implementation in construction projects. Despite the close links between these two concepts, research on the effect of procurement approaches on BIM implementation is scarce. To address this gap, this paper aims to investigate the barriers that affect BIM implementation through the lens of procurement approaches.

A mixed-method approach was adopted using a questionnaire survey (n = 116) and interviews with key stakeholders (n = 12) in Jordan. The outcomes of the quantitative parts were augmented with findings from interviews.

It was revealed that the deployment of unfavourable construction procurement approaches represents a major hurdle towards BIM implementation. Though essential for enhancing BIM implementation, it is revealed that a fundamental change from the common design-bid-build (DBB) to more collaborative procurement approaches remains infeasible in view of the realities that govern the construction industry.

It was revealed the deployment of unfavourable construction procurement approaches represents a major hurdle towards BIM implementation. Though essential for enhancing BIM implementation, it is revealed that a fundamental change from the common DBB to more collaborative procurement approaches remains infeasible given the realities that govern the construction industry.

As the first of its kind, a set of recommendations for establishing supportive, workable procurement that does not deviate significantly from common procedures and practices is presented. Rather than advocating a shift to procurement approaches that are aligned with BIM, the findings offer novel insight into the necessity of developing a framework within the boundaries of the current and widely adopted procurement approaches to address the identified construction procurement issues and facilitate BIM implementation.

In construction projects, underpayments can be recognised as one of the significant drawbacks that impact the success of a project. Research into underpayments is considered ambiguous and provides a limited reflection of the issue, which makes it complicated to trace how it originates in the first place. This study aims to examine the causes that lead to underpayments and develop a holistic synthesis of underpayments for subcontractors in the lifecycle of a construction project.

An open-ended and closed-ended questionnaire was used to collect the data using purposeful sampling with 28 construction stakeholders who ranged from main contractors, subcontractors and others (Small medium enterprises SMEs, Consultancies, Clients etc.). Data collected was analysed to trace drivers and the impact of underpayment and suggested mitigation strategies to be identified whilst viewing the perspectives of a main contractor and subcontractor.

The findings show that the most prominent driver for underpayments is variation disputes followed by cash flow. The research also suggests mitigation strategies such as collaborative working, more robust budget control and early identification of risks as potential remedies to overcome the underpayment issue. The research concludes with a framework that elicits the complexity underlying underpayments for subcontractors in construction projects.

The research evolves the understanding that underpayment is a complex phenomenon, relying heavily on the data/information exchange mechanism between the main contractor and subcontractors. This research provokes the need to understand underpayment further so it can be mitigated.

To make more smart health-care system, the health-care data should be shared in the secure manner, and it improves health-care service quality. This paper aims to implement a modern decentralized blockchain, safe and easy-to-use health-care technology application in the cloud.

On observing the graph, the convergence analysis of proposed Levy Flight-integrated moth flame optimization method at 80th iteration was 4.59%, 2.80%, 3.316%, 8.92% and 2.55% higher than the traditional models MFO, artificial bee colony (ABC), particle swarm optimization (PSO), moth search algorithm (MSA) and glow worm swarm optimization (GWSO), respectively, for Hungarian data set. Particularly, in best case scenario, the adopted method attains low cost value (5.672671) when compared to all other traditional models such as MFO (5.727314), ABC (5.711577), PSO (5.706499), MSA (5.764517) and GWSO (5.723353).

The proposed method achieved effective performance in terms of key sensitivity, sanitization effectiveness, restoration effectiveness, etc.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a building information modelling (BIM)-based multi-objective optimization (MOO) framework for volumetric analysis of buildings during early design stages. The objective is to optimize volumetric spaces (3D) instead of 2D spaces to enhance space utilization, thermal comfort, constructability and rental value of buildings

The integration of two fundamental concepts – BIM and MOO, forms the basis of proposed framework. In the early design phases of a project, BIM is used to generate precise building volume data. The non-sorting genetic algorithm-II, a MOO algorithm, is then used to optimize extracted volume data from 3D BIM models, considering four objectives: space utilization, thermal comfort, rental value and construction cost. The framework is implemented in context of a school of architecture building project.

The findings of case study demonstrate significant improvements resulting from MOO of building volumes. Space utilization increased by 30%, while thermal comfort improved by 20%, and construction costs were reduced by 10%. Furthermore, rental value of the case study building increased by 33%.

The proposed framework offers practical implications by enabling project teams to generate optimal building floor layouts during early design stages, thereby avoiding late costly changes during construction phase of project.

The integration of BIM and MOO in this study provides a unique approach to optimize building volumes considering multiple factors during early design stages of a project

The construction industry has been traditionally referred to as slow when it comes to technological transformation. This study aims to investigate and present a scorecard of the construction industry in the past decade, the paper adopted Bibliometrics. The study identified the various digital transformation (DT) aspects in the construction industry and future research directions are also identified.

To achieve the aim of this research, an inductive approach was adopted through a grounded theory strategy. Secondary data was retrieved from the Scopus database and analysed using Biblioshiny and VOSviewer. The data was retrieved through specific keywords related to the study focus.

The study also proposed a balanced flow model for DT discussion in the construction industry. DT in the construction industry disrupts every aspect of the industry, albeit at different rates due to the existing barriers; hence, the study identified areas that require further research. It, thus, provides a theoretical and practical basis for researchers and practitioners alike.

The study reviewed the DT research discuss in the construction industry. It is worthy of note that this is the first study that analyses the DT of the construction industry in the past decade.