Andrew Patton McCoy

Appalachia faces a housing challenge that is not only a shortage of affordable units, but also a regional housing-production capacity problem shaped by workforce availability, financing, regulation, market awareness, technology readiness, and institutional coordination. This study examines how participatory stakeholder workshops can identify and prioritize regional constraints and strategies for using industrialized off-site construction (IOC) to expand housing delivery capacity in Appalachia. The study used a three-step qualitative methodology: a regional context review, seven participatory design workshops across Appalachian locations, and agreement testing and a practitioner advisory review of workshop-derived themes. A total of 129 stakeholders participated, representing construction, manufacturing, modular construction, education, workforce development, economic development, local government, finance, and related sectors. Workshop data were analyzed through structured prompts, affinity clustering, PICK chart prioritization, independent re-clustering, and Cohen’s κ agreement testing. Across the workshops, institutional and industry stakeholders identified five common conditions that, in their view, shape IOC’s potential in their regions: Education & Training, Policy & Regulation Framework, Marketing & Awareness, Financing & Funding, and Technology & Innovation. In PICK prioritization, participants rated marketing and awareness as high impact and easier to implement, and workforce, policy, financing, and technology conditions as harder. In discussion, they described the harder conditions as requiring longer coordination. The study contributes a replicable participatory process for diagnosing regional housing-production constraints and positioning IOC as a context-dependent pathway for improving housing delivery, affordability, and access.

Appalachia faces a housing challenge that is not only a shortage of affordable units, but also a regional housing-production capacity problem shaped by workforce availability, financing, regulation, market awareness, technology readiness, and institutional coordination. This study examines how participatory stakeholder workshops can identify and prioritize regional constraints and strategies for using industrialized off-site construction (IOC) to expand housing delivery capacity in Appalachia. The study used a three-step qualitative methodology: a regional context review, seven participatory design workshops across Appalachian locations, and internal and external validation of workshop-derived themes. A total of 129 stakeholders participated, representing construction, manufacturing, modular construction, education, workforce development, economic development, local government, finance, and related sectors. Workshop data were analysed through structured prompts, affinity clustering, PICK chart prioritization, independent re-clustering, and Cohen’s κ reliability testing. Findings identified five common conditions shaping IOC’s regional potential: Education & Training, Policy & Regulation Framework, Marketing & Awareness, Financing & Funding, and Technology & Innovation. Marketing and awareness emerged as a near-term entry point, while workforce, policy, financing, and technology conditions required longer-term coordination. The study contributes a replicable participatory process for diagnosing regional housing-production constraints and positioning IOC as a context-dependent pathway for improving housing delivery, affordability, and access.

Growing disruptions, uncertainties, and complex risks such as pandemics, extreme weather, and geopolitical conflicts imperil the under-examined construction supply chain, a network that occupies a pivotal nexus in the broader economy. Therefore, it is vital to map its relationships and pinpoint where disruptions concentrate, and recovery can be accelerated. Guided by three research questions on network emergence, positional vulnerability, and how pressures steer technology adoption, this exploratory study maps how construction supply chain networks both create and alleviate operational strain. To address this problem, this study combines empirical, semi-structured interviews with social network analytics. Purposive and snowball sampling yield semi-structured interviews that span all major supply chain roles. Thematic coding translates reported interactions into nodes and edges of a complex network and groups challenges into thematic categories. Furthermore, degree, betweenness, and eigenvector metrics outlined structural vulnerabilities and leverage points. The results show how six main challenge categories (comprising 16 open codes) concentrate systematically at specific network positions. Relationship and contract issues accumulate at high-centrality brokers (degree centrality 0.818) while external pressures affect peripheral suppliers. Technology adoption preferences emerge from structural roles, with central coordinators seeking predictive analytics and peripheral actors prioritizing traceability systems in networks with moderate density (0.591). The research provides a replicable framework for identifying structural vulnerabilities and designing position-based interventions in construction supply chains. The network-theoretic framework opens new research directions for dynamic network analysis, multi-project supply webs, and stakeholder-centered technology integration strategies.

Technological advancements and lower production costs since the mid-1990s have dramatically improved opportunities for instructors to tailor self-made instructional videos for their students. However, video production technology has outpaced the development of educational theory, causing instructional videos to consistently fall short of their pedagogical potential. Responding to these shortcomings, scholars from various backgrounds have started publishing guidelines to help practitioners as they develop instructional videos for their respective fields. Using a rapid literature review, this article contributes to this ongoing effort by synthesizing theory-based, best-practice guidelines for a specific subcategory of educational videos called supplemental instructional videos (SIVs). SIVs are different from other types of instructional videos in that they are used to support and magnify other learning methods, mediums, and materials rather than substitute for them. Bringing the best-practice guidelines synthesized in this paper immediately into application, they were used to inform the production of SIVs for an undergraduate course that was held in the Building Construction Department of a major public university in the United States during the Spring 2020 semester. The methods used in the production of the SIV guidelines were systematically documented during the course for future researchers and practitioners to learn and build from.

This study reports an empirical analysis of an all-electric, Net Zero Energy Housing (NZEH) development located in a mixed-humid climate zone (4A, Virginia, USA). Circuit-level energy monitors were used to measure energy consumption and energy production data (solar photovoltaic) at 1-hr intervals in six identical apartments over 24 months. The study employs a multi-step case study methodology to a) empirically evaluate energy consumption and production data, b) identify the temporal variability of energy consumption and production data at different time scales, c) understand the impact(s) of weather and human-building interaction on energy consumption and production, and d) synthesize the study’s “lessons learned” toward data-driven recommendations for future NZEH researchers and practitioners. The study found that the development’s net zero energy goal was achieved in three of six case units and that NZEH housing performance was more influenced by human-building interaction than weather variability. The analysis also found the solar photovoltaic (PV) performance to be reliable across the sampled units over the periods of measurement, suggesting that solar PV could be oversized as an approach to overcome verifiability in HBI and achieve NZEH performance goals.

Research on green-certified buildings has often been focused on the benefits of green standards, such as energy efficiency, smart growth, resource conservation, and health protection. Recent studies suggest the adoption of a reductionist sustainability planning language can turn green-certified houses into luxury goods, attracting White, prime-age, college-educated households with some pro-environmental attitudes who replace existing long-term, lower-income residents in core urban areas. While many factors may work together in driving neighborhood change and gentrification in cities, the question this study aims to address is to what extent the supply of green-certified units can affect neighborhood change and gentrification? We use Central Virginia’s Multiple Listing Service (MLS) housing market transactions data and the U.S. Census Bureau’s socioeconomic data to present the differential effect of new construction of market-rate, green-certified units in a natural experiment using difference-in-differences estimates. We find that neighborhoods that include new, green-certified units have experienced a statistically significant increase in population, supporting new construction and positively affecting house prices. We also detect some negative effects on minorities and minority owners, but these effects have not yet reached statistical significance. This study finds strong evidence of green housing providing the conditions that make areas ripe for gentrification, but more studies should follow up to better measure and generalize this finding.

This is the last issue of the International Journal of Construction Education and Research for 2020 and my last issue as editor. Serving as an associate editor for 4 years and editor for 5 years ha...