Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
4.4
3.1
Journals
Buildings
Special Issues
Beyond Compliance: Safety, Productivity and Innovation in Diverse Construction Contexts
share announcement

Beyond Compliance: Safety, Productivity and Innovation in Diverse Construction Contexts

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 January 2026) | Viewed by 1595

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Emmanuel Aboagye-Nimo

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment, Birmingham City University, Birmingham B4 7XG, UK
Interests: SMEs; micro firms; informal practices; decolonising safety
Dr. Poorang Piroozfar

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Architecture, Technology and Engineering, University of Brighton, Brighton BN2 4GJ, UK
Interests: modern methods of construction
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Colin Booth

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Engineering, College of Arts, Technology and Environment, University of the West of England, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QY, UK
Interests: smart and sustainable infrastructures; flooding and sustainable drainage systems (SuDS); climate change adaptation strategies; environmental management systems; built environment studies; urban pollution
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Safety and productivity in construction are often framed as competing priorities. This Special Issue aims to challenge that narrative by exploring how strategic planning, organisational culture, and emergent site practices can enable both safe and productive outcomes. In many contexts, particularly among small firms or in resource-constrained environments, construction safety becomes adaptive and highly contextual.

We invite contributions that examine how safety is understood, negotiated, and maintained in such settings. Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Informal or undocumented safety practices;
  • Safety management in small and micro construction firms;
  • Subcontractor and multi-tier supply chain challenges;
  • Site-level innovation and safety-informed technologies;
  • Productivity pressures and their influence on safety behaviours;
  • National and organisational cultures and their impact on safety norms;
  • Balancing global standards with local risk contexts.

We welcome original research articles, conceptual papers, and case studies that engage with these themes from any geographical or methodological perspective.

Dr. Emmanuel Aboagye-Nimo
Dr. Poorang Piroozfar
Prof. Dr. Colin Booth
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

  • construction safety
  • productivity in construction
  • safety-performance trade-offs
  • site-level innovation
  • safety culture
  • informal practices
  • emerging technologies
  • small and micro enterprises
  • resource-constrained environments

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (2 papers)

Download All Papers
Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Review

Jump to: Other

44 pages, 2076 KB  
Review
Unpacking the Internal Sustainability Drivers for Enhanced Performance of Construction Firms
by Funmilayo Ebun Rotimi, Roohollah Kalatehjaria, Taofeeq Durojaye Moshood and Zahra Jalali
Buildings 2026, 16(1), 145; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings16010145 - 28 Dec 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 731
Abstract
Construction firms struggle to implement sustainable practices, delivering triple bottom line benefits despite growing environmental pressures. While research examines isolated sustainability drivers, the understanding of how organizational factors integrate to enable successful implementation remains fragmented. This systematic literature review synthesizes 249 articles (2010–2025) [...] Read more.
Construction firms struggle to implement sustainable practices, delivering triple bottom line benefits despite growing environmental pressures. While research examines isolated sustainability drivers, the understanding of how organizational factors integrate to enable successful implementation remains fragmented. This systematic literature review synthesizes 249 articles (2010–2025) to develop an integrated framework explaining how internal capabilities drive sustainable innovation and performance in construction. This thematic synthesis reveals three critical insights. First, successful sustainability requires integrated configuration across green innovation capabilities, organizational learning, environmental governance responses, and performance measurement, not isolated initiatives. Second, construction’s project-based discontinuity, fragmented supply chains, and regulatory heterogeneity require capability configurations absent from manufacturing-focused sustainability theories. Third, cross-domain synergies create reinforcing feedback loops where capabilities enable compliance, measurement accelerates innovation, and governance catalyses development. This research provides practitioners an actionable framework identifying critical capability investments and interdependencies for sustainability implementation. Theoretically, we extend the Natural Resource-Based View and the Dynamic Capability View through three construction-specific mechanisms: temporal knowledge discontinuity paradox, distributed capability configuration, and regulatory complexity multipliers. These extensions advance sustainability theory beyond manufacturing, providing a foundation for understanding sustainable competitive advantage in project-based, fragmented industries. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond Compliance: Safety, Productivity and Innovation in Diverse Construction Contexts)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Other

Jump to: Review

31 pages, 2512 KB  
Systematic Review
Optimization of Loss Determination in Claims Settlement Using Smart Industry Tools: A Systematic Review and Implications for the Construction Industry
by Jorge Acevedo-Bastías, Sebastián González Fernández, Luis López-Quijada and Vinicius Minatogawa
Buildings 2026, 16(6), 1175; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings16061175 - 17 Mar 2026
Viewed by 508
Abstract
The claims resolution process is a cornerstone of the insurance industry, aiming to fairly and accurately determine the economic losses caused by adverse events. Traditionally, adjusters have relied heavily on expert judgment to perform this task. While this approach is essential, it often [...] Read more.
The claims resolution process is a cornerstone of the insurance industry, aiming to fairly and accurately determine the economic losses caused by adverse events. Traditionally, adjusters have relied heavily on expert judgment to perform this task. While this approach is essential, it often suffers from subjectivity, inconsistent criteria, and difficulty integrating complex data sources into objective analyses. In this context, Smart Industry tools—such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Computer Vision (CV), and the Internet of Things (IoT)—have demonstrated high potential to automate damage detection and assessment; however, their effective integration into loss determination remains uneven across different productive sectors. This study addresses this problem through two objectives. First, we conducted a systematic literature review following PRISMA guidelines to identify which Smart Industry tools are currently used in the insurance sector for loss determination and to analyze their level of maturity in different productive sectors. We searched the Web of Science and Scopus databases, identifying 253 studies, of which 23 met our inclusion criteria. Second, based on the gaps we identified between the construction sector and more advanced industries such as automotive, we propose a methodological framework based on Building Information Modeling (BIM). Our results show that most solutions focus on the detection and technical classification of damage, especially in the automotive sector, while construction lacks methods to convert these technical findings into operational economic estimates. The proposed framework addresses this gap by standardizing technical and economic data from the underwriting stage, enabling more automated, traceable, and objective loss determination for infrastructure claims. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond Compliance: Safety, Productivity and Innovation in Diverse Construction Contexts)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-2
Back to TopTop