Selected Papers from the CIB WBC 2025—Sustainable Development and the Built Environment: Legal Challenges and Opportunities

A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Construction Management, and Computers & Digitization".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 1376

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA
Interests: infrastructure planning; risk management and decision-making; disaster risk reduction; profitability of construction companies; built environment law; construction engineering and management; intelligent planning units
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Guest Editor
Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA
Interests: human factors; human AI teaming; smart occupational safety; risk and decision making

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Guest Editor
Department of Architecture, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G1 1XQ, UK
Interests: built environment law and ethics; contract administration; professional practice; responsible innovation; digitalisation in construction; sustainability; BIM
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Buildings invites contributions aligned with the CIB World Building Congress 2025, hosted at Purdue University. The Congress theme, “Sustainable built environment–the role of the construction community in meeting the UN SDGs”, offers an opportunity to explore interdisciplinary approaches to global challenges in construction and design as they relate to the sustainable built environment.

The Special Issue will focus on legal considerations for addressing SDGs in the built environment and ethical practice across the life cycle of buildings and infrastructure. We invite empirical, theoretical, and practice-based papers addressing social, environmental, legal implications, and the legal/contractual transformations required in the built environment to effectively address the SDGs. Contributions are particularly encouraged from participants of the CIB WBC 2025, as well as members of CIB Task Groups and Working Commissions.

The Special Issue welcomes original contributions from conference participants and broader academic and professional communities. Submissions should address the challenges and opportunities at the intersection of innovation, responsibility, ethics, law, and the Sustainable Development Goals in the built environment.

We welcome empirical studies, theoretical contributions, legal and policy analyses, case studies, and interdisciplinary research from across architecture, engineering, construction management, law, planning, and design fields.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Regulatory pathways to SDG compliance in urban development;
  • Climate resilience and building codes: legal innovations and challenges;
  • Human rights, housing law, and the right to a sustainable living environment;
  • Circular economy and construction waste regulation;
  • Green finance, eSg disclosure, and legal accountability in real estate development ;
  • Litigation, enforcement, and the role of environmental courts in upholding SDG commitments

Prof. Dr. Makarand Hastak
Dr. Behzad Esmaeili
Dr. Andrew Agapiou
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • sustainable construction law
  • environmental regulation
  • built environment governance
  • legal barriers to sustainability
  • climate-responsive policy
  • green infrastructure compliance

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

13 pages, 218 KB  
Article
The Reliability of Expert Evidence in Construction Litigation: Towards Institutional Reliability
by Andrew Agapiou
Buildings 2025, 15(23), 4215; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings15234215 - 21 Nov 2025
Viewed by 360
Abstract
This article examines the institutional reliability of expert evidence in construction litigation in England and Wales. Drawing on doctrinal analysis, practitioner interviews, and comparative evaluation of Australia, Singapore, and international arbitration, it argues that reliability should be understood not as an ethical virtue [...] Read more.
This article examines the institutional reliability of expert evidence in construction litigation in England and Wales. Drawing on doctrinal analysis, practitioner interviews, and comparative evaluation of Australia, Singapore, and international arbitration, it argues that reliability should be understood not as an ethical virtue of individual experts but as a systemic property of evidentiary governance. Despite the procedural safeguards of Part 35 of the Civil Procedure Rules, expert independence remains undermined by adversarial incentives, methodological inconsistency, limited judicial capacity, and weak enforcement. Comparative models demonstrate that concurrent evidence, expert accreditation, and structured judicial oversight can effectively realign procedural incentives with epistemic integrity. The article proposes four interdependent reforms—accreditation, methodological standardisation, judicial capacity-building, and feedback-based oversight—to embed reliability as a procedural norm within the Technology and Construction Court. By reframing reliability as an institutional obligation rather than a moral aspiration, the study contributes to wider debates on evidentiary governance, procedural justice, and the regulation of expertise in technologically complex adjudication. Full article
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