Mohammad Raoufi

Construction organizations have been implementing different actions to control and mitigate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on their workers and operations. Although some of these actions allowed construction organizations to remain productive during the pandemic, many organizations still struggle to cope with these effects. The construction industry has a need to identify the most effective actions that construction organizations can take to effectively control and mitigate the challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper presents results of two surveys conducted with construction organizations, primarily in North America, and identifies the most effective mitigation actions to help construction organizations operate during this pandemic and develop evidence-based operational strategies to use during the current pandemic and any future pandemics. The contributions of this paper are (1) identifying an extensive list of possible actions to control and mitigate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on construction organizations, (2) providing a categorization and methodology for assessing and ranking these actions, (3) identifying the most effective mitigation actions for construction organizations during the current COVID-19 pandemic and future pandemics, and (4) developing a comparative analysis of action prioritization for different stages of the COVID-19 pandemic to provide insight into the management of the adverse effects of pandemics on construction organizations. Data analysis of the survey results showed that construction organizations have been greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of their operational capacity, productivity, and workforce practices, and many organizations expect to have higher percentages of employees working remotely postpandemic they did prepandemic. Comparative analysis also showed an increasing trend in the importance of using technology to control and mitigate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in construction organizations.

The construction industry is entering the digital age, which offers innovative digitalization opportunities (DOs) regarding cost efficiency, project management, and improved client experience. In their early efforts to implement DOs, construction organizations have had varying degrees of success, and the results prompted organizations to question whether they have the appropriate digital strategy and capabilities. Hence, construction organizations need a framework to systematically evaluate the potential benefits of implementing DOs and factors influencing their successful implementation. This paper presents a framework that supports decision makers in construction organizations to assess DOs based on experts’ judgement of the factors influencing their successful implementation. The framework incorporates fuzzy arithmetic and linguistic evaluation to capture experts’ subjective assessments and is implemented in the Digitalization Opportunities Road Mapping Tool (DORMT©). DORMT©, which allows organizations to evaluate individual DOs, rank multiple DOs, and identify the best options for implementing digitalization within their organization.

Construction researchers have long had difficulties identifying motivational factors and situational and contextual factors affecting crew motivation and performance. The two main objectives of this paper are to define a methodology to identify the factors affecting construction crew motivation and performance and to bridge the gap in construction research by exploring more recent motivational concepts that have been introduced and advanced in nonconstruction domains. This paper presents a general review of motivation literature, applies recent advancements in motivation research from nonconstruction disciplines, and presents a case study to illustrate the proposed methodology and findings from data analysis. Because of the limitation in the sample size of craft survey respondents, the results of the case study should not be generalized to the entire construction industry. This paper makes three contributions: first, it provides a comprehensive set of factors affecting crew motivation and performance; second, it presents a novel methodology for identifying and measuring motivational factors at both the individual and crew levels; and third, it defines a methodology to evaluate and rank critical factors and factors with a high potential for improvement in construction crew motivation and performance and to evaluate the differences between the perspectives of supervisors and craftspeople on the identified critical factors.

The objective of this paper is to define a method to measure construction crew motivation assessed at both the individual and crew levels. After performing a literature review to identify relevant factors, we present a methodology for assessing overall crew motivation based on the aggregation of expert opinions. The method entails asking experts (e.g., crew workers or supervisors) to provide inputs for the various measures, and then using a fuzzy aggregation approach to combine individual and crew-level responses. The findings of this paper will help to model and analyze construction crew behavior, which will contribute to better prediction and management of construction labor productivity and project performance.