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Sustainable Development of the Construction Engineering and Project Management

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Engineering and Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2022) | Viewed by 10302

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Saeed Banihashemi

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Guest Editor

Built Environment, School of Design and Built Environment, Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra, Kirinari St., Bruce, ACT 2601, Australia
Interests: building information modelling; sustainable building; digital design and construction
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Hamed Golzad

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Guest Editor

Building & Construction Management, School of Design and the Built Environment, University of Canberra, Kirinari St., Bruce, ACT 2601, Australia
Interests: occupational health and safety; workforce planning; industry 4.0; Internet of Things (IoT)
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Mani Poshdar

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Guest Editor

Building Engineering, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland 1010, New Zealand
Interests: building construction management; project planning; building science and techniques

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainable development has been evolved into a globalized phenomenon and requires reinforced links and synchronized movements among humanity, nature, and economy in our built habitat. However, at this stage of development, sustaining our built environment is considered by a body of literature as “not enough”. A pioneering endeavor ascertains that there is a need to start thinking of comprehensive and regenerative, rather than just sustainable, engineering. Indeed, there is a need to move from a narrow focus on performance, mitigation strategies, and the minimization of impacts, to a broader framework that enriches place, people, and ecology at the core of the sustainable development of the construction engineering and project management. However, this process is a cycle of endless development and adjustment in the construction context. It necessitates the complex interaction of the triple bottom line, environmental, economic, and social principles through a critical appraisal, and finding intelligent decisions from the macro to the micro scale.

In recent years, substantial investments have been made in construction projects. This is due to the demand for this industry to pave the way for rapid economic growth alongside fulfilling societies’ aspirations and expectations. Hence, the research suggests that sustainable delivery of these projects entails integrating principles of sustainability into construction activities throughout the whole life cycle of a project. This includes every actor involved on the project being committed and responsible for undertaking sustainable practices. Despite this strategic focus, challenges such as unstable economy due to the pandemic and climate change, the lack of change management, transition and transformation frameworks, and the lack of awareness hamper the proposed shift towards sustainable practices. The problem of translating these strategic objectives into concrete action at the project level has, therefore, remained unresolved.

I am pleased to invite you to this Special Issue, the aim of which is to trigger discussions and set the stage for revisiting the transformative role associated with sustainable construction engineering and management and implications for our built assets. This includes technology, process, and policy implications; barriers and drivers; and the innovations, outcomes, and risks involved in such a transformation. The intention is to provide a repository for relevant studies and lessons learned, and an opportunity to facilitate knowledge sharing and discussions among researchers, practitioners, and policy makers.

This Special Issue targets up-to-date surveys, simulation, analysis, and synthesis approaches with a particular focus on sustainable design, planning, engineering, technology, management, and delivery of construction projects. Studies of theoretical, empirical, and experimental nature along with case studies on the description of real-life projects are welcome. Of particular interest are multidisciplinary research studies involving industry practitioners, built environment experts, and project managers that provide rigorous sustainable construction practices on real-life projects.

I look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Saeed Banihashemi
Dr. Hamed Golzad
Dr. Mani Poshdar
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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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. Sustainability 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 2400 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 development
project management and sustainability
sustainable construction engineering solutions
sustainable technologies for construction industry

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

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19 pages, 1282 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Organizational Learning Role in Construction Organizations Resilience during the COVID-19 Pandemic

by Rufaidah AlMaian and Amani Bu Qammaz

Sustainability 2023, 15(2), 1082; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15021082 - 6 Jan 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2045

Abstract

The speed of the COVID-19 outbreak forced decision-makers to implement emergency plans to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on their business. This research is conducted to study the role of organizational learning (OL) practices in construction organizations’ resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis was implemented together with the results of semi-structured interviews that were conducted immediately before the pandemic to learn how OL would help construction organizations survive during crises similar to the pandemic and create potential opportunities after the crisis that could contribute to ensure long-term sustainability. The results show that OL practices can assist construction organizations in surviving the threats of the pandemic and creating opportunities. The defined opportunities were distributed on three interrelated dimensions: management awareness, investing in information, communication technology (ICT), and standardized business practices. The results of the SWOT analysis revealed the inevitable need for OL-based business cultures. Therefore, it is essential for construction organizations to focus on implementing OL practices that would best assist them in being robust and resilient during crises and ensure their sustainable status in the long term. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Development of the Construction Engineering and Project Management)

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18 pages, 1005 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Exploring the Impact Mechanism of Interface Management Performance of Sustainable Prefabricated Construction: The Perspective of Stakeholder Engagement

by Haiying Luan, Long Li and Shengxi Zhang

Sustainability 2022, 14(17), 10704; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141710704 - 28 Aug 2022

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 1981

Abstract

Prefabricated construction (PC) activities are geographically fragmented, temporally disrupted, resulting in numerous and complex interfaces. It is stakeholder collaboration by integrating diverse resources within the PC industry to potentially address the factors that impact interface management performance. Previous studies have explored the impact factors of interface management performance without deeply considering the stakeholder and their linkages with the impact factors of interface management. Therefore, this study used a two-mode social network to investigate the impact of the interface management performance of sustainable PC from a stakeholder perspective. Firstly, 24 factors impact interface management of sustainable PC, as well as 12 stakeholders with power to address the factors, were identified based on a literature review and interviews with experts. Subsequently, Stakeholder-factors relationships were judged by a designed questionnaire. Then, the centrality and core-periphery structure analysis methods were adopted to study the network. The findings revealed that developers, general contractors, subcontractors, designers, and suppliers are the core stakeholders, with improved collaboration between these five stakeholders (42%) able to address 18 core factors (75%). The factors that have the most significant impact on the interface management performance of prefabricated construction include understanding and trust, communication and learning, and cooperative attitudes among participants, the effectiveness and timeliness of information communication, formal interface management processes, technical innovation, and the perfection of standards and specifications. By prioritizing these factors, the complexity of the network can be successfully decreased and interface management performance can be improved. This study not only contributes to identifying the impact mechanism of stakeholders on the factors of interface management performance, but also contributes to promoting stakeholder cooperation to improve the sustainability of prefabricated construction. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Development of the Construction Engineering and Project Management)

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Review

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27 pages, 3468 KiB

Open AccessReview

Sustainable Project Governance: Scientometric Analysis and Emerging Trends

by Lihong Zhang, Saeed Reza Mohandes, Jiawei Tong, Mohamed Abadi, Saeed Banihashemi and Binchao Deng

Sustainability 2023, 15(3), 2441; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15032441 - 30 Jan 2023

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2799

Abstract

Though a relatively large number of studies on sustainable project governance (SPG) have been undertaken, the existing corpus of literature is bereft of a comprehensive review paper that scientometrically analyses the materials published hitherto and puts forward the research gaps and the corresponding future works to be conducted. To fill this knowledge gap, this study undertakes a bibliometric review and scientometric analysis by meticulously delving into the relevant body of knowledge of sustainable governance reported in different databases. From the results obtained using CiteSpace software, the following conclusions can be drawn: (1) most of the keywords with high centrality rankings are related to the environment, (2) “participation” and “land use” are the most important clusters, (3) the United Kingdom and the United States are by far the most advanced countries in the concerned field, (4) the hot topics within the defined clusters are “industry”, “transition management”, “property rights”, and “natural resources”, and (5) the two salient keywords are “public participation” and “insight”. The attained findings lay out a solid foundation for researchers and practitioners towards fostering the area of SPG, by focusing on land use, community participation, politics, climate change, and the water–energy–food nexus and finding ways to tackle the elaborated shortcomings. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Development of the Construction Engineering and Project Management)

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23 pages, 5476 KiB

Open AccessReview

Occupant Behavior Impact on Building Sustainability Performance: A Literature Review

by Habtamu Tkubet Ebuy, Hind Bril El Haouzi, Riad Benelmir and Remi Pannequin

Sustainability 2023, 15(3), 2440; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15032440 - 30 Jan 2023

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2433

Abstract

Occupant behavior controls a building’s energy system to adapt the indoor environment, significantly increasing building energy consumption. Occupant behavior, which refers to the occupancy inside a building and their interaction with building systems (windows, blinds, thermostats, lighting and appliances, etc.), has been largely overlooked in building energy performance analysis. These factors make it essential to design sustainable buildings. It is widely acknowledged in the literature that there is an alarming performance gap between the estimated and actual energy consumption in buildings. This paper proposes a systematic literature review on energy-related occupant behaviors and their implications for energy performance. It aims to better understand occupant behavior, existing behavior modeling approaches and their limitations, and key influential parameters on building energy performance. It is based on a survey of ScienceDirect, Web of science and Scopus scientific databases, using their bibliometric analysis tools together with the VOSviewer software. Finally, this study identifies the following significant research gaps for future development: limitations of the generic and robust occupant behavior model; lack of actual data for validation; lack of research on different types of buildings (institutions, university buildings); limitations of considering all factors which influence occupant behavior; missing the detailed realistic situations of occupant behavior; integrating building information modeling (BIM) into building energy modeling. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Development of the Construction Engineering and Project Management)

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