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The purpose of this study is to evaluate the progress and scholarly contributions concerning the effects of COVID-19 on transportation.

Using the SCOPUS database, an analysis was conducted on the output of 733 studies concerning COVID-19 and transportation from 2020 to 2022. Bibliometric visualization techniques were performed, which included funding sponsors, top-cited documents, top journals, top countries, co-authorship of authors, co-citation of authors and keyword analysis.

This study presents diverse findings encompassing influential authors, predominant countries, prominent journals, pivotal papers, funding institutions and affiliations engaged in COVID-19 and transportation research. The research offers a comprehensive assessment of the field’s advancement, addressing existing gaps within the context of limited pertinent literature.

These practical implications highlight how the taxonomical study using bibliometric visualization can inform various aspects of research, policy, practice and decision-making related to COVID-19 and transportation.

The study uses bibliometric visualization techniques to provide a comprehensive overview of existing literature and research trends in COVID-19 and transportation. Its taxonomical approach categorizes the literature systematically, enhancing its originality. The comprehensive analysis contributes to understanding the research landscape, while visualization uncovers new insights. Overall, the study’s unique focus, visualization techniques, taxonomical approach and comprehensive analysis offer originality and potential for new insights in this field.

This study considers the potential of logistics 4.0 for supply chain (SC) optimization in French retail. The authors investigate the implementation of Industry 4.0 technologies to optimize SC performance in the retail sector and SC's role in the digital transformation in supply chain management (SCM).

The authors first carry out a comprehensive bibliographic taxonomy to highlight the different existing digital tools. Based on this, the authors posed three research questions (RQs) and hypotheses to examine the contribution of logistics 4.0 in improving the performance of retail logistics. Then, the authors considered a case study of retail in France based on qualitative and quantitative analysis to answer all the RQs and examine the hypotheses.

The results showed that digital tools such as Cyber Security Systems (CSS), Big Data Analytics (BDA) and Blockchain (BC) technology are the most effective and appropriate tools to optimize the SC performance in retail.

This research work showed that the implementation of these tools in retail can offer several benefits such as improved productivity, optimized delivery times, improved inventory management and secure real-time communication, which leads to improved profitability of the SC.

The study opens a door to develop practical roadmaps for companies that enable smart deliveries based on logistics 4.0.

Being the final end of the logistic distribution, attended home delivery (AHD) plays an important role in the distribution network. AHD typically refers to the service provided by the distribution service provider to the recipient's doorstep. Researchers have always identified AHD as a bottleneck for last-mile delivery. This paper addresses a real-life stochastic multi-objective AHD problem in the context of the Indian public distribution system (PDS).

Two multi-objective models are proposed. Initially, the problem is formulated in a deterministic environment, and later on, it is extended to a multi-objective AHD model with stochastic travel and response time. This stochastic AHD model is used to extensively analyze the impact of stochastic travel time and customer response time on the total expected cost and time-window violation. Due to the NP-hard nature of the problem, an ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm, tuned via response surface methodology (RSM), is proposed to solve the problem.

Experimental results show that a change in travel time and response time does not significantly alter the service level of an AHD problem. However, it is strongly correlated with the planning horizon and an increase in the planning horizon reduces the time-window violation drastically. It is also observed that a relatively longer planning horizon has a lower expected cost per delivery associated.

The paper does not consider the uncertainty of supply from the warehouse. Also, stochastic delivery failure probabilities and randomness in customer behavior have not been taken into consideration in this study.

In this paper, the role of uncertainty in an AHD problem is extensively studied through a case of the Indian PDS. The paper analyzes the role of uncertain travel time and response time over different planning horizons in an AHD system. Further, the impact of the delivery planning horizon, travel time and response time on the overall cost and service level of an AHD system is also investigated.

This paper investigates a unique and practical AHD problem in the context of Indian PDS. In the present context of AHD, this study is highly relevant for real-world applications and can help build a more efficient delivery system. The findings of this study will be of particular interest to the policy-makers to build a more robust PDS in India.

The most challenging part of an AHD problem is the requirement of the presence of customers during the time of delivery, due to which the probability of failed delivery drastically increases if the delivery deviates from the customer's preferred time slot. The paper modelled an AHD system to incorporate uncertainties to attain higher overall performance and explore the role of uncertainty in travel and response time with respect to the planning horizon in an AHD, which has not been considered by any other literature.

Construction management researchers have acknowledged that the use of buildability could improve outcomes of project. Efficient use of resources required for the procurement of construction projects is important for the economy. This study aims to aggregate the current knowledge on buildability within the construction management domain into an understandable whole using the systematic review approach.

An interpretivist epistemological approach was used as a lens for the systematic review of published research on buildability. The selected articles cover the time period between 1987 and 2020. The articles published in 2021 and 2022 were excluded to ensure that the scope of the current study is distinct and clear. In this research, qualitative content analysis was used to scrutinise the selected journal papers.

Based on the analysis of literature, the trends and gaps in the current knowledge on the topic of interest were identified. It was found that stakeholder’s knowledge and commitment play a huge role in the extent of adoption of buildability as a practice in the construction sector. Also, the study confirms that the use of buildability is beneficial to the project and its stakeholders.

The study maps the current state of knowledge on buildability and provides information on the gaps that could be explored in the future by researchers.

Delay and disruption claims involve a complex process that often result in disputes, unnecessary expenses and time loss on construction projects. This study aims to review and synthesize the contributions of previous research undertaken in this area and propose future directions for improving the process of delay and disruption claims.

This study adopted a holistic systematic review of literature following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis guidelines. A total of 230 articles were shortlisted related to delay and disruption claims in construction using Scopus and Web of Science databases.

Six research themes were identified and critically reviewed including delay analysis, disruption analysis, claim management, contract administration, dispute resolution and delay and disruption information and records. The systematic review showed that there is a dearth of research on managing the wide-ranging information required for delay and disruption claims, ensuring the transparency and uniformity in delay and disruption claims’ information and adopting an end-user’s centred research approach for resolving the problems in the process of delay and disruption claims.

Complexities in delay and disruption claims are real-world problems faced by industry practitioners. The findings will help the research community and industry practitioners to prioritize their energies toward information management of delay and disruption claims.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge in delay and disruption claims by identifying the need for conducting more research on its information requirements and management. Subsequently, it provides an insight on the use of modern technologies such as drones, building information modeling, radio frequency identifiers, blockchain, Bigdata and machine learning, as tools for more structured and efficient attainment of required information in a transparent and consistent manner. It also recommends greater use of design science research approach for delay and disruption claims. This will help to ensure delay and disruption claims are the least complex and less dispute-prone process.

Given the growing relationship between Nigeria and the USA, the purpose of this study is to compare conflict communication of Nigerians and Americans.

A total of 186 Nigerians and 214 Americans completed an online survey of Hammer’s (2005) Intercultural Conflict Style Inventory as well as items about the effect of conflict on team collaboration.

Contrary to expectations, Nigerians reported using more direct, whereas Americans reported using more indirect, communication when confronting conflict despite the stereotype that Americans are typically direct or more likely to say what is on their minds. However, consistent with expectations, Nigerians reported exercising more emotional restraint, whereas Americans favored the use of emotional expressiveness in conflict.

Overall, Nigerians were more concerned than Americans about the negative effect of conflict on team collaboration in the workplace. This concern was associated with the use of directness, indirectness and emotional restraint. Further, an exploratory structural equation model showed that the use of emotional expression was affected, in different ways, by several aspects of work and communication. Implications of these results are discussed along with directions for future research.

This paper systematically reviewed research work on drivers of teamwork, which will reinforce construction work teams to enhance workers’ safety performance. This study adds to the existing but limited understanding of teamwork drivers on construction workers’ safety performance. This paper presents scholars and industry-based professionals with critical initiatives that have to be implemented in organisations to get positive results in safety while working in teams with an emphasis on systems drivers of teamwork on safety performance at the organisational level, which will help in providing information on the functioning of the teams and contribute towards improved safety performance of team workers.

This study aims to systematically examine the existing body of knowledge on drivers of teamwork by analysing 53 publications from the years 1997–2021. The Scopus search engine was used to conduct a systematic review and germane publications were collated.

According to the findings of the review, since 1997, there has been a burgeoning concern in the research of drivers of teamwork and its impact on workers’ safety performance. After performing a systematic review, 37 drivers of teamwork were identified. The top five drivers are effective communications, team workers’ relations, leadership, shared knowledge and information, and team training. Moreover, it was noted that the United States and Australia have been the international regions of focus for most of the research in the area of drivers of teamwork from the years 1997–2021. The 37 drivers of teamwork are distributed into six major socio-technical components: people drivers; culture drivers; metrics drivers; organisational and management practices and procedures drivers; infrastructure drivers and technology drivers.

The results reported present research scholars and professional practitioners with an overview of the drivers of teamwork that could be implemented in the construction industry to streamline potential implementations and improve safety performance of construction workers.

A list of teamwork drivers has been developed to ratify potential empirical research in the area of construction safety. The results would contribute to the existing but restricted understanding of drivers of teamwork in the construction industry.

Various approaches have emerged to assist practitioners in making more informed decisions in highway construction projects. However, industry practitioners are still using subjective ways to make decisions. Also, researchers have developed tools and techniques with similar objectives. Lack of information on what has been developed might lead to those issues. Therefore, this paper aims to review trends of evolution, pinpoint strengths and gaps in the literature and identifies potential future directions for decision-making research in highway construction projects.

A systematic review was conducted on published articles on decision-making in highway construction projects using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) technique.

The analysis of 101 articles revealed that existing decision-making research in highway construction projects targets improvements in four areas: feasibility, conceptual, detailed scope and detailed design. The four areas consist of sixteen subthemes that are detailed in this study. In addition, most research involved developing decision support tools and systems as well as decision-making models, techniques and frameworks. Lastly, several research areas have emerged, such as adding more decision criteria including those with uncertainties, expanding existing decision-making models into decision support systems, benchmarking decision criteria between different sample populations and exploring inter-and intra-relationships between decision criteria.

This paper provides an overview of existing research on decision-making in highway construction projects. Also, it reveals research gaps in the body of knowledge to point out directions for future research. Finally, industry practitioners can use the findings to develop strategies for effective decision-making processes.

This study aimed to identify barriers impeding circular economy (CE) uptake in the construction industry in literature, categorize them for the development of a framework and to seek the interrelationships among the categorized barriers. This allowed for identifying integrated solutions to holistically address the barriers. The study also sought to identify the “hot” themes, the knowledge gaps and future research directions on barriers impeding CE.

Forty-eight relevant articles were desk reviewed from different construction peer-reviewed journals and published conference papers. A scientometric analysis allowed for co-occurrence of keywords relating to CE. A content analysis enabled the identification of 79 barriers impeding the uptake of CE in the construction industry which were further categorized into six distinct categories for the development of a framework showing the interrelationships among the categorized barriers.

The identified barriers include construction sector inertia, lack of design standards, lack of knowledge, awareness and understanding, design cost, and perception of second-hand materials as substandard among others. The study categorized the identified barriers for better understanding into six different groups: cultural barriers, social barriers, environmental barriers, economic barriers, technical barriers and technological barriers. Strategies to address the barriers were also proposed. The interrelationships among the various barriers were also shown in a proposed framework to educate professionals on the interconnectivity of the barriers.

Categorization of the various barriers impeding CE uptake contributes to the body of knowledge. Also, the interrelationships among the various categorized barriers in the framework will enable construction professionals make informed decisions regarding the successful integration of CE in the industry, better appreciate the barriers that impede CE uptake and apply strategies to holistically address the barriers. This will expand current knowledge outside the narrow scope of isolated barriers.

To the global construction industry, the review presents a list of barriers and their interrelationships that could provide implementation strategies for the uptake of CE in the industry.

The geographical scope of this study is not limited, and therefore encourages wide applicability of the findings to the global construction industry.

This research presents a comprehensive review of the literature on the barriers to incorporating indoor environmental quality (IEQ) principles into building designs. The aim was to identify these barriers in the literature and subsume them under broad categories for the development of a framework showing the interrelationships among the barriers.

The research design used a systematic desktop review which comprised of three levels of screening. The first level allowed for a broad selection of papers; the second level of screening was done to limit the results to papers within the construction industry, and the third level of screening limited the documents strictly to the publication period of 2000–2021.

Twenty-four (24) barriers were identified in the literature, including lack of integrated design teams, which ranked the highest in appearance, high initial costs, poor market for IEQ buildings and higher design charges among others. The identified barriers were classified into six (6) categories namely capacity barriers, economic barriers, process-related barriers, cultural barriers, client-related barriers and steering barriers.

The findings of this study would enable practitioners and policymakers to better understand what is preventing the widespread adoption of IEQ designs in the built environment and devise actionable strategies to overcome them. It adds to the body of knowledge on IEQ research by categorizing the various barriers that prevent the delivery of IEQ projects.

The developed barriers in this research can serve as a useful checklist to future researchers who may want to validate the barriers to IEQ designs in empirical studies and in different settings.

The interconnectivity revealed by the web-like framework allows for an appreciation of the various barriers of IEQ adoption which would help in expanding the current knowledge on IEQ beyond the narrow scope of isolated barriers. The fact that the papers selected in this study are not limited geographically, underscores the wide applicability of the findings in the global construction industry.