While women are an untapped resource to meet the workforce demand for both professional roles and skilled tradesmen in the construction industry worldwide, the presence of tradeswomen in the industry remains extremely low. This research explores the experiences of tradeswomen in the Australian construction industry by examining their career choice factors, career barriers and job satisfaction. Data was collected using an online survey questionnaire distributed via two tradeswomen support networks. The results show that the tradeswomen’s choices to work in construction trades were significantly affected by the opportunities for personal development via job tasks, personal interests and self-motivation. While their experience with a list of career barriers was also rather positive, they had adopted a mixed of proactive strategies for overcoming the barriers. The results also show that most respondents had a high level of overall job satisfaction that is positively associated with their income level. The findings provide a much-needed insight into the experiences of tradeswomen to inform any initiatives aimed at (i) promoting and recruiting women into construction trades, and (ii) improving working lives of tradeswomen in order to mitigate skills shortages in the industry.

The recruitment, retention and development of early career women have always been a challenge in the construction industry. With the focus on early career women or new female construction management degree graduate hires in construction, this study explores: (i) factors influencing their choice of career in construction; (ii) the extent of which their career expectations were met in their first few years of job experience; and (iii) how their met or unmet career expectations are related their overall job satisfaction. Data was collected using an online survey questionnaire. The results show that the top significant factors influencing the respondents’ career choice are career opportunities and belief of getting better pay. Their career expectations, on the other hand, were met or exceeded to a great extent for almost all the measurement items. The results also show that the respondents have a relatively high overall job satisfaction level. Although there is lack of evidence that their overall job satisfaction increased as met career expectations increased, there are statistically significant positive correlations among the career expectation measurement items. These findings have implications for human resource practices of construction employers that aimed to attract early career women into the industry, and to reinforce their met career expectations and job satisfaction.

Given that project selection is a vital and recurring strategic decision for construction firms, there is a sizeable collection of studies that examine the factors affecting contractors’ decision to bid (d2b). With the aim to provide a global perspective of factors affecting contractors’ d2b, this study meta-analytically reviews 24 relevant studies published between 1988 and 2021. The results show that that there are 28 critical factors, and the top five factors are (i) project payment terms, (ii) financial capacity of client, (iii) client’s reputation in the industry, (iv) the history of client’s payments in the past projects, and (v) project size. The heterogeneity test results, which show no statistically significant heterogeneity across the included studies, reinforce the generalisability of the findings to a global context. The research findings have practical implications for construction clients in their procurement of construction services, highlighting the importance of good reputation and payment history. For contractors, they now have access to a list of critical factors from a global perspective in facilitating their d2b decision. There are methodological implications for the research community in guiding future efforts in replicating studies.

The considerably low female student enrollments in construction management (CM) undergraduate degree programs have continued to draw attention from academia. With a cohort of local and international female students in a CM program in an Australian university, this case study examined the students’ CM degree choice decision, their learning experience, the strategies for attracting more female students to CM programs, and recommendations were made for CM program recruitment efforts based on the findings. The interview results show that, for both local and international student groups, their personal interest in construction and career opportunities were the most important factors that influenced their CM degree choice decision. For the international student group, however, there were additional influencing factors including immigration opportunities after graduation, financial considerations, program entry requirements, and program duration. Although the international students would like to have support in finding internships, both student groups generally had positive learning experiences in their studies. Both student groups identified the need to advertise more about CM programs as a part of recruitment strategies. It is recommended that information and resources about CM programs be made readily accessible to current and future CM students, high school counselors, and education service providers in a timely manner via social media platforms and the Internet.

With the changing trends in global climate and increasing awareness of the environmental impact of the built environment, private and public sector building stakeholders are under constant and mounting pressure to reduce carbon emissions, energy consumption and waste generation. Conceptually, green building regulations are claimed to be the most effective tool toward promoting better environmental outcomes. Nonetheless, there is limited empirical evidence to justify claims for their effectiveness, especially in the Australian context, despite the introduction of various green building standards and regulations over the past two decades. In addressing this gap, this research aims to map the energy consumption and carbon emissions of certified offices under the mandatory Commercial Building Disclosure program. For this, the energy and carbon efficiencies of green certified commercial offices within the eight Australian central business districts (CBD) for 2011–2020 were assessed, and the offices were classified as green and non-green offices, based on their National Australian Built Environment Rating System (NABERS) of fewer than 4, and 4 and above stars, respectively. Data were extracted from the Commercial Building Disclosure program datasheet and thereafter analysed using various descriptive and inferential statistical techniques. Furthermore, the normalisation process was undertaken to capture the relative changes in energy and environmental performance between green and non-green offices. The results show an encouraging trend of a possible significant improvement in energy savings, and a reduction in carbon emissions for offices that have undergone retrofit and obtained an increase in their NABERS ratings. However, it is notable that 6-star NABERS-certified offices sometimes tend to save less energy than their 4- and 5-star rated counterparts, despite their high initial investment costs. Thus, this informs policymakers, authorities and practitioners that the highest NABERS rating does not necessarily help reduce energy consumption in buildings, and that greater emphasis should be placed on promoting the use of a whole building design approach, by exploring a more effective and appropriate combination of features, systems and materials based on stakeholders’ needs and behaviours.