The importance of workers’ social identity in shaping their safety behaviors has become increasingly acknowledged. Among various social identities (e.g., workgroup, trade, etc.), improving project identity stands out as particularly impactful; it not only promotes safer behaviors among workers but also establishes a shared identity that unites all project members, thereby enhancing their sense of belonging. However, existing management strategies, primarily designed for traditional, long-term organizations, often require substantial managerial efforts to build and maintain high-quality management-employee interactions or organizational reputation. Such strategies may be less effective and economically impractical in the temporary nature of construction projects, suggesting a notable gap in management strategies that effectively foster workers’ project identity to enhance safety behaviors. To fill this knowledge gap, the authors aim to develop and evaluate affordable and easy-to-implement managerial interventions that foster workers’ project identification and safety behaviors. Drawing on social identity theory, the authors designed project identity-promoting messages and symbols that could be easily embedded into everyday items, such as posters and T-shirts. To evaluate their effectiveness, longitudinal field experiments were conducted, gathering 124 self-reported surveys on project identification and safety behavior from 31 workers before and after the interventions at two separate construction sites over three months. The survey data were analyzed using repeated measures (RM) ANOVA analysis to examine changes before and after the intervention. The results indicate significant improvements in both affective and behavioral dimensions of project identification, as well as in safety participation, demonstrating the potential of social identity–based interventions in improving workers’ safety behaviors and project identification. This study contributes to the body of knowledge on construction organizations and construction safety by developing and evaluating practical managerial interventions based on social identity theory, which enhance construction workers’ project identification and safety behavior.

Artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly is being used by businesses to improve capabilities and performance. Guided by the dynamic capabilities framework, this study investigated how AI assimilation affects environmental performance, with organizational agility serving as a mediating factor in construction organizations. A moderated mediation analysis was employed in this study to investigate the contingent effect of strategic flexibility in altering the connection between agility and environmental performance. Data were gathered from 308 project managers. The findings of structural equation modeling validated the arguments that AI assimilation increases organizational agility and that this translates to increased environmental performance. Furthermore, strategic flexibility moderates the direct relationship between agility and environmental performance, as well as the indirect relationship between AI assimilation and environmental performance via organizational agility, emphasizing the significance of aligning agile responses with the strategic objectives of the business. The relevance of this research to the field of construction engineering management is that it leads to the integration of AI, improving the environmental performance of the firm through organizational agility. This study shows the moderating function of strategic flexibility in the interrelation between agility and environmental performance. These consequences are aimed primarily at the construction project management sector and policymakers because they emphasize the importance of agile methods of progress of projects to serve the strategic objectives the success of which is vital for environmental sustainability.

Digital transformation strategies in various industries are shifting stakeholders’ expectations regarding the construction sector’s capacity to provide efficient and high-value digital solutions. In response, construction organizations are adopting digital technologies to enhance the efficiency, effectiveness, and overall quality of their design, operations and project delivery. Despite the growing prevalence of digital technologies, the construction sector lags in its effective adoption and benefit realization. The construction literature predominantly addresses a direct link between the use of digital technology and its attributed benefits, overlooking the critical dimension of intraorganizational change to realize them. A notable gap exists in the systematic understanding of how construction organizations define and approach digital transformation in their daily practices and how it can be conceptualized for the construction sector. This study pivots toward exploring organizational-level impacts of digital technology implementation and delves into the evolution of strategic assumptions and management practices essential for realizing digital transformation, a concept developed in the management and information system literature. Because construction client organizations play a pivotal role in driving industry-wide change, 24 experts from six organizations across four countries were interviewed by employing an exploratory qualitative research approach. The findings underscore a critical insight: the effectiveness of digital technology implementation in construction hinges significantly on an organization’s readiness to embrace holistic, internal change. This study proposes a conceptual model centered on innovation management, business transformation, data precedence, change leadership, and digital governance, framing these as the essential elements for harnessing the full potential of digital technology. This study contributes to the evolving discussion of digital transformation in the construction sector, highlighting that fundamental changes cannot solely be imposed through external forces; instead, they must originate internally—“change must come from within.”

The underestimation of the conceptual divergences in the field of construction industrialization (CI) has led to the understanding of distinct positions and terms as equivalent and to their interchangeable use. This has generated ambiguity regarding the concept in literature and professional practice, limited knowledge exchange and collaboration, hindered the establishment of measurement bases and regulatory contexts, and led to incorrect assumptions about benefits. This study addresses the need for a comprehensive framework that highlights and facilitates the recognition and shared understanding of conceptual divergences in CI. An in-depth analysis of terminology and definitions was conducted through a systematic literature review, content analysis, and hierarchical cluster analysis. The findings present a comprehensive compendium of CI terms and definitions proposed between 1949 and 2023, cited at least once between 2017 and 2023. Sixty-eight underlying themes in CI definitions were identified, and the predominant conceptual approaches in contemporary literature were determined. Clarifying CI’s conceptual divergences facilitates the effective exchange of knowledge and the consistent implementation of CI practices in diverse contexts. It also contributes to the work of researchers and professionals from diverse perspectives is based on the recognition and shared understanding of this diversity, promoting the advancement of the CI knowledge field.

In practice, activities of the construction multiproject use limited resources in different locations, which requires resources to be transferred frequently between projects or activities. In this study, we simultaneously consider the stochastic resource transfer times and the dynamic arrival of new projects during the multiproject execution and propose the resource-constrained dynamic multiproject scheduling problem with stochastic transfer times (RCDMPSP-STT). Since priority rule (PR)-based heuristic methods can efficiently solve project scheduling problems through real-time decision making in uncertain environments, we evaluate the performance of 72 PR-based heuristic methods based on six objectives from the project, multiproject, and resource perspectives. Each PR-based heuristic method consists of an activity priority rule (APR) and a transfer priority rule (TPR) to determine the sequence of activities and resource transfer. Moreover, based on the resource transfer information, we design eight new APRs. In addition, a hybrid PR-based heuristic method is proposed to select different PR-based heuristic methods for multiproject scheduling based on the arrival time of the new projects. Extensive numerical experiments show that the newly designed resource transfer information-based APRs and composite APRs perform better on the robustness and makespan objectives, respectively, with an improvement of 30.63% and 22.24% compared with the classical APRs. Furthermore, under different objectives and perspectives, better-performing PR-based heuristic methods are recommended for the project and multiproject managers.

Immersive virtual reality (IVR) simulates real-world construction scenarios in remote environments, providing construction management students with interactive hands-on learning experiences. However, in-depth exploration and synthesis of recent advancements in IVR technology tailored explicitly for construction management students’ learning is lacking. To fill this gap, this study reviewed existing publications on IVR technology practices in the last decade (2014–2024) using a mixed quantitative-qualitative review method. Precisely, 287 related articles were identified through keyword searching on Scopus and then fed into VOSviewer bibliometric analysis and visualization software to map recent trends. Furthermore, a qualitative discussion highlights the cutting-edge IVR technologies for construction management students’ learning across three dimensions: (1) biometric feedback integration, (2) multisensory system, and (3) IVR for soft skills development. Additionally, three areas that require further investigation beyond the current advancements in IVR for construction management education were proposed: (1) student data privacy and security, (2) student safety in multisensory systems, and (3) assessment of students’ acquired soft skills. This study provides valuable insights into the evolving domain of educational technology, informing students, educators, researchers, and practitioners about the effectiveness of IVR in enhancing construction management learning experiences and outcomes. Furthermore, this study highlights innovative aspects of IVR technology for construction management education that require further research.

Serious games and simulations differ from other forms of gaming in that their primary goal is education rather than entertainment. The face-to-face, analog format has gained popularity as an effective pedagogical strategy due to its benefits in providing hands-on experience and creating enjoyable moments for learners. In recent years, there has been a call from the construction industry to expand the scalability and geographic reach of education and training programs. To respond to this, there is greater potential for technology-driven serious games and simulations. Several questions need to be addressed regarding technology-driven serious games and simulations: (1) whether they can produce similar or even better learning effectiveness compared to the physical format, (2) whether adopting advanced technologies affects learning, and (3) what design and development attributes are specifically crucial. This research investigated the potential of technology-driven formats as a means to offer significant learning benefits. The marshmallow target value design simulation was selected as a test bed and converted into two variants of technology-driven formats: computer based and virtual reality (VR). The three formats, physical, computer based, and VR, were tested with 38, 32, and 30 participants, respectively. The results indicated that the VR format has similar effectiveness to the physical format, whereas the computer-based format is inferior to these formats. It turns out that ease of use and usability moderate the learning effectiveness of the computer-based format but do not impact the VR format. Also, analyses on design and development attributes indicated that the computer-based format needs additional consideration compared to the VR and physical formats. This research contributes to new knowledge on the quantitative effects of technology-driven serious games and simulations and the efficacy of different design and development aspects for future education game developers, designers, and instructors in the construction industry.

Working in risky environments, construction workers’ actions to contribute to cultivating a safety-oriented environment (i.e., safety participation) have consistently emerged as a leading factor in construction safety incidents. Safety participation is crucial for improving workplace safety among construction workers. Although the perception of workplace risk has been found to influence safety participation behavior, the results have been inconsistent. Some studies suggest that risk perception decreases safety participation behavior, whereas others suggest it increases it. In this study, we consider anxiety and reflection about death as important psychological mechanisms to explain why risk perception may either increase or decrease safety participation behaviors. Based on emotion as social information theory, we propose from an emotional perspective that risk perception increases construction workers’ death anxiety and thus decreases their safety participation behavior. Subsequently, we propose from a cognitive perspective that risk perception increases construction workers’ death reflection, thereby increasing their safety participation behavior. Further, these relationships are affected by construction workers’ mindfulness (an individual’s awareness and attention to the experience of the present moment without judgment). Using data from 532 construction workers, we tested the proposed conceptual model. Construction workers with high levels of mindfulness showed a decrease in the negative effect of death anxiety on safety participation behavior, whereas the positive effect of death reflection on safety participation behavior increased. These findings extend the relevant literature on risk perception and safety participation behavior by adding two critical psychological explanatory mechanisms, death anxiety and reflection, and mindfulness, an essential contingent factor. In addition, this study enriches current theoretical perspectives by applying emotion as social information theory to explore the relationship between risk perception and safety participation behavior.

Public–private partnerships are an important tool for infrastructure development, but variability in bids can undermine value for money. This study investigated bid variability in India’s initial two auction road assets under the Toll-Operate-Transfer (TOT) model. A comparative case study research design was utilized involving an in-depth analysis of the TOT I and TOT II auctions. Data was gathered from project reports, guidelines, news articles, stakeholder interviews, and then thematically analyzed. The analysis revealed substantial bid variability within and between the auctions. The findings showed bid variability within the auctions depended on the information gaps owing to the timing and quality of the information released by the auctioneer, the tender conditions and tender process, potential value enhancement and securitization of assets by the bidders, heterogeneous bidder objectives across asset types, and strategic bidding assumptions. The bid variability between the TOT I and TOT II auctions depended on asset quality, declared reserve price, sociopolitical factors, and the prevailing business conditions. While TOT I road quality and growth prospects encouraged strong bidding, overpricing, shifting business scenarios, and political uncertainty in TOT II states depressed bids below expectations. Results indicated that transparency around asset characteristics and traffic forecasts enables realistic bid assessments to control variability. It can inform bid rationalization and pricing mechanisms for future auctions of public infrastructure. Setting reserve prices reflecting project specifics also helped anchor bid ranges. Attracting larger bidder pools countered the influence of overly optimistic/pessimistic valuations. Gradual expansion into new geographies allowed adaptive policy learning.