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Construction insurance has been advocated as a useful financial means to transfer risks and mitigate potential project losses. However, there is a general reluctance to purchase construction insurance in China. The purpose of this paper is to develop an extended theory of planned behavior (TPB) model to understand and predict contractors’ construction insurance purchasing intention.

Quantitative data were collected through a questionnaire survey. The respondents comprise 130 project directors/managers and contract managers/administrators who were involved in or familiar with the construction insurance purchasing or managing. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

This study developed an extended TPB model to explain the contractors’ intention formation. The results indicated that the insurance purchasing intention was mainly influenced by attitudes and subjective norm, rather than perceived behavioral control. The analyses also revealed that the added variables (risk perception and past experience) had a significant impact on the attitudes and perceived behavioral control.

This study identified the factors leading to Chinese contractors’ low willingness to purchase construction insurance by extending the TPB model to the context of construction insurance purchasing. The extended TPB model may serve as a theoretical framework and basis for the Chinese contractors, insurers, and regulators to understand the root causes of contractors’ low willingness to purchase construction insurance and make joint efforts to address the risks and insurance in the construction industry.

Although research on prefabricated construction has gained increasing attention in recent years, limited efforts have been devoted to investigating safety issues in the off-site manufacture, especially workers’ behavioral intentions to work safely. Thus, research is needed to identify the motivational factors determining off-site construction workers’ safety behaviors. The purpose of this paper is to investigate workers’ safety behavior by examining the determinants of behavioral intention in the off-site manufacturing plants in China.

Theory of planned behavior (TPB) was modified and used in this study to explain how the elements in the hypothesized model interact. Data were collected using a questionnaire. Structural equation modeling technique with partial least-squares estimation was used to analyze the data collected.

The findings of this study indicated that workers’ tendency to engage in safety behavior is positively related to attitude toward the behavior, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control and behavioral habit, among which attitude toward the behavior and behavioral habit have most significant influences on safety behavior. This finding provides a better explanation on the pathways and the impacts of the crucial factors on the safety behaviors for the off-site manufacture.

The possible innovation of this research lies in its attempt to understand the antecedents of workers’ safety behavior in the off-site construction environment, which may make original contributions to construction safety research and practice. The findings of this study contribute to the body of knowledge in TPB. Corresponding countermeasures are put forward in order to improve workers’ safety behavior in off-site construction.

This paper aims to evaluate the existing and emerging Offsite Construction (OSC) skills. Construction industry is inherently labour oriented, fashioning poor labour productivity, low sustainability, slow and costly processes. These shortcomings promote OSC alongside driving forces such as industrialisation, automation and digitalisation. However, the traditional construction skills are not on par with the complexity, where robots, co-bots and digital-driven automated systems create the need for novel OSC skills.

Data collection is executed through a Roundtable activity hosting Construction Management academics form Australian universities specialising in construction technology. They engaged in ranking of skills along with creating a word cloud for the question, “what are the future construction skills that will be more beneficial in an OSC platform?” Word cloud is reviewed in a discussion approach while skills ranking data is analysed using descriptive statistics.

The most prominent OSC skills are logistics manager, project manager and digital producer. Attributes of skills that come under construction trades workers, design, engineering and specialist professionals will vary based on onsite-offsite percentage combination in a construction project. Study reviews the required construction skills at two ends of a continuum featuring the trade-based skills; bricklayer, concreter and carpenter at one end (traditional build) and the heavily digitalised and automated skills at the other end (OSC). The noticeable transition towards OSC urges industry practitioners, policy-makers and education providers to focus on understanding and cultivating key OSC skills.

This study describes the transition of skills from onsite to OSC. It is presented as one of the earliest attempts to evaluate OSC skill profiles.

Cultural differences have been frequently cited as a major source of risks for international joint ventures (IJVs). Cultural differences may cause extensive conflicts in technology, norms and emotion among the international joint venture (IJV) partners. The purpose of this study is to explore the interactive effects of national culture differences (NCDs) and conflict management approaches on the performance of international construction joint ventures (ICJV).

Data were collected using a questionnaire survey method with 143 valid responses. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the research hypotheses.

It was found that ICJV performance declined with a high degree of NCDs. The negative effect of NCDs on ICJV performance was mitigated by adopting the cooperative conflict management approach; while it was aggravated by adopting the competitive conflict management approach. The findings may provide an alternative way (i.e. adopting the cooperative conflict management approach rather than avoiding or competitive approaches) to address the cultural conflicts in the multicultural project management teams.

Firstly, as NCD negatively impacts performance of ICJVs, project managers should pay attention to cultural issues and learn how to manage them; Secondly, as cooperative and competitive conflict management approaches have different moderating effects on the relationship between NCD and ICJV performance, project managers must choose appropriate conflict management styles in multination teams. Thirdly, as the avoiding approach has no significant moderating effect on the negative relationship between NCD and ICJV performance, it is important for Chinese partners not to employ avoiding approach to deal with conflicts in ICJV.

This study uniquely adds to the literature on cultural issues in managing ICJVs by integrating the moderating effects of conflict management approaches. The interactive effects of conflict management approaches and national cultural differences on ICJV project performance may contribute to the theories regarding conflict management theory in the context of cross-cultural management.

The construction industry is currently responding to pressures of industrialisation happening across all sectors. Consequently, offsite construction (OSC) has become a vehicle to achieve industrialisation. This requires changes in traditional construction processes resulting in possible changes in construction skill requirements. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to identify and review prevailing OSC practices and skills in the Australian construction industry. This study aims to critically analyse the existing skill profile classifications through a single case study and identify the need for an OSC specific skill classification.

This study follows a case study design, with an in-depth analysis of a single construction project. Only one case study was studied because scientifically, one example was enough to prove that the prevailing skill classifications do not represent OSC skills in a modern context. Data was retrospectively collected through semi-structured interviews of project stakeholders representing design, manufacture and assembly. Content analysis was conducted to analyse the collected data and produce findings.

This study identifies the inadequacy of the existing classification system, unavailability and the need of OSC specific skill categorisation. It highlights new skills that enter OSC; building information modelling engineer, three-dimensional draftsperson, OSC project manager and project coordinator, which are not identified in the available Australian skill classifications. These, together with existing skills need to be carved in to create a new skill classification.

This study is the first of its kind where a comprehensive OSC project is evaluated as a case study to determine OSC skill classification requirements in Australia.

Industry 4.0 is exacerbating the need for offsite construction (OSC) adoption, and this rapid transformation is pushing the boundaries of construction skills towards extensive modernisation. The adoption of this modern production strategy by the construction industry would redefine the position of OSC. This study aims to examine whether the existing skills are capable of satisfying the needs of different OSC types.

A critical literature review evaluated the impact of transformative technology on OSC skills. An existing industry standard OSC skill classification was used as the basis to develop a master list that recognises emerging and diminishing OSC skills. The master list recognises 67 OSC skills under six skill categories: managers, professionals, technicians and trade workers, clerical and administrative workers, machinery operators and drivers and labourers. The skills data was extracted from a series of 13 case studies using document reviews and semi-structured interviews with project stakeholders.

The multiple case study evaluation recognised 13 redundant skills and 16 emerging OSC skills such as architects with building information modelling and design for manufacture and assembly knowledge, architects specialised in design and logistics integration, advanced OSC technical skills, factory operators, OSC estimators, technicians for three dimensional visualisation and computer numeric control operators. Interview findings assessed the current state and future directions for OSC skills development. Findings indicate that the prevailing skills are not adequate to readily relocate construction activities from onsite to offsite.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is one of the first studies that recognises the major differences in skill requirements for non-volumetric and volumetric OSC types.

The aim of this paper is to present a comprehensive analysis of risk management in East Asia from 1998 to 2021 by using bibliometric methods and tools to explore research trends, hotspots, and directions for future research.

The data source for this paper is the Web of Science Core Collection, and 7,154 publications and related information have been derived. We use recognized bibliometric indicators to evaluate publications and visually analyze them through scientific mapping tools (VOS Viewer and CiteSpace).

The analysis results show that China is the most productive and influential country/region. East Asia countries have strong cooperation with each other and also have cooperation with other countries. The study shows that risk management has been involved in various fields such as credit, supply chain, health emergency and disaster especially in the background of COVID-19. We also found that machine learning, especially deep learning, has been playing an increasingly important role in risk management due to its excellent performance.

This paper focuses on studying risk management in East Asia, exploring its publication's fundamental information, citation and cooperation networks, hotspots, and research trends. It provides some reference value for scholars who are interested or further research in this field.