Dear Colleagues,

Unrelenting urbanisation and economic development will heighten demand for construction activities. This demand requires new thinking approaches on sustaining the limited construction resources from a circular economy perspective. However, despite significant productivity gains in other industry sectors, the construction industry remains a laggard industry due to various issues, including increasing project complexity, constrained finances, traditional construction procurement methods, and poor uptake of digital technologies (DT). Moreover, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has caused notable challenges to global and local construction supply chains and productivity, thereby stimulating discussion about resilience and agility to overcome disruptions. A sustainable, resilient, and agile construction supply chain is achieved through a greater deployment level of DT and access to information (AtI). The deployment of digital tools and data-driven solutions (e.g., sensors, BIM, digital twin, track-and-trace) unleashes value-driven data insights and analytics. This supports construction organisations’ trajectory towards achieving sustainability goals, attracts and retains talents, and develops new business models.

DT and AtI must be integrated across the construction supply chain from the business vision/strategy to development, innovations, operations, and projects. For example, digital sensors connect site activities to the digital world, while value-driven data and analytics inform better decision-making processes across the supply chain. The integration enables construction companies to cope with disruptions and build organisational and operational agility and resilience. Furthermore, the utilisation of DT and AtI supports construction organisations’ developing and enhancing their sustainability strategies by monitoring, measuring, and managing their processes in the path to sustainability goals (e.g., net zero). Although some organisations have launched various initiatives to leverage digital technologies and data analytics, more knowledge needs to be created that addresses the role of DT and AtI in enhancing the capabilities and performance of the construction supply chain.

Aims, scope and potential topics

This Special Issue invites submissions that explore construction digitisation topics related to achieving the sustainability, resilience, and agility of construction supply chains and operational activities. We welcome studies covering conceptual, strategic or operational employment of DT and/or AtI across the construction supply chain. We encourage submissions that adopt novel concepts and methods, including case studies, qualitative comparative analyses of multiple cases, and various quantitative methods.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Digitisation role in building supply chain sustainability, resilience, and agility;
• Value-driven data and predictive analytics applications for environment-aware decision making in construction;
• Applications of digital tools and solutions in the hybrid (WFH and working from office) working models;
• Business models for improved performance built on machine learning and artificial intelligence;
• Digital concentration and inequality among large organisations and SMEs;
• Prefabrication and digital fabrication to unlock manufacturing and standardisation features, and accelerate end-to-end project delivery;
• IoT of sensors and systems that enhance buildings performance and compliance;
• Requirements of data usage and cybersecurity in buildings and infrastructures;
• Cloud-based collaborations in construction projects;
• Scan-to-BIM and approaches for digital twin creation and updating;
• Efficient project delivery with digital technologies;
• Agility and resilience benefits using digital technologies;
• Knowledge management benefits/risks of producing volumes of construction-related data;
• Knowledge network and modelling for facilitation of digital twin;
• Use of historical data in engineering, procurement, and construction bidding and contract documentations;
• Employees awareness of and skills in utilising digital tools.

Dr. Sherif Mostafa
Prof. Dr. Rodney Stewart
Dr. Vidal Paton-Cole
Dr. Payam Zekavat
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 2200 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.

• construction digitisation
• digital sustainability
• supply chain resilience and agility
• data mining and predictive analytics
• prefabrication and digital fabrication
• digital twin
• knowledge network modelling
• cloud-based collaborations
• business models and value of data