One of the major issues of the construction industry has been the “reworks” that affect the time, quality, and cost of projects. Therefore, reworks and the ineffective use of site resources and materials will always result in significant losses on projects. The development of information technology has led to the widespread use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) to enhance the delivery of more sustainable building construction projects. The purpose of this study is to combine the Step-wise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA) method and BIM technologies to identify and reduce time delays caused by reworks in construction projects. Firstly, 49 rework causes in residential buildings were identified and ranked. Then, BIM was generated and compared to the initial model. It was observed that working hours were reduced by 4.6%. Moreover, using an Earned Value Management (EVM) system, a 0.06 increase in Schedule Performance Index (SPI) factor was illustrated. Results obtained by this study provide an effective step in reducing a project’s time in the construction industry.

A balance (symmetry) between socio-cultural and socio-economic benefits as a part of the economic, social, and cultural development policy of each city and country should be assured when converting built heritage. To anticipate building conversion priorities and opportunities, modern technologies can be employed. However, currently the activity of reconstruction of heritage buildings is part of the construction domain wherein modern digital technologies have been the least ever applied. Therefore, photogrammetry and the 3D modeling of existing heritage buildings was suggested. A case study of Sapieha Palace, built in the Baroque style in 1689–1691 in Vilnius, Lithuania was explored in this research. The applied technologies and software (Agisoft Photoscan, Autodesk ReCap and Autodesk Revit) allowed for the creation of a high quality and accurate model involving both the textured exterior of the building and the interior layout. In addition, the valuable features of a building were identified and marked in a three-dimensional digital model. Based on the model, the authors formulated possible conversion alternatives of the building and identified the associated decision-making criteria, as well as determined their relative significance by an expert survey method. The authors suggested the application of the multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) method under uncertainty, namely the rough weighted aggregated sum product assessment (WASPAS), for ranking alternatives according to multiple criteria. Therefore, the suggested integration of modern digital technologies and decision-making models helps to assure the rational conversion decision of built cultural heritage based on high accuracy data as well as contributing to the sustainable development of engineering processes.

Conflict in human relations is unavoidable; therefore, it can occur in construction projects that are full of many human relationships. These conflicts can lead to claims if interlocutors do not agree. The main result of the claims is the delay and overrun of costs in construction projects. Additionally, poor management of claims affects the success of construction projects and their budget and schedule. Moreover, controlling claims ensures the successful completion of construction projects and minimizes delays and disputes. This study sought to improve the project performance by ranking the causes of claims and examining their impacts on Key Performance Indicators (KPI) using the combined AHP-TOPSIS (Analytic Hierarchy Process-Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) method. Given that construction projects are constantly evolving and becoming more complex and have many linear and nonlinear relationships and structures, these projects can be considered as a kind of system dynamics. The system dynamics have been used for nearly four decades to analyze and improve the performance of construction projects. This study attempted to provide a model with a system dynamics approach to predict the performance of construction projects based on the reasons for the claim. In this model, the most important performance indicators, interactions between them, and the relationship of these indicators with the reasons for claiming were simulated. The results showed that delays are the most important reasons for making claims, and they have a great impact on the KPIs such as scheduling, sustainability, customer satisfaction, quality, and team satisfaction, respectively. In the modeling and simulation discussion in this study, the proposed model simulated the dependencies between the KPIs of construction projects and their changes over time and provides a better understanding of how performance indicators interact with each other. Additionally, it can be used as a basis for simulating different management policies to find the best solution to prevent and correct the negative effects of poor performance.

Different optimization methods generate a large variety of solutions that are suitable for achieving the sets of chosen objectives. The selection of appropriate design variables and objective functions are essential elements in the optimization process. However, the existing methodologies seem to be too complicated and designers seek to use simpli-fied methods in order to evaluate the overall performance of the buildings. The advancement of information technology enables the use of Building Information Modelling and energy simulation tools for the integrated building design in an early stage. Thus, this article introduces a new evaluation method for analysis of the effective solution of the building performance and aims at determining the influence of a complex criteria (construction duration, construction cost, annual bill-based costs, annual primary energy demand, annual CO2 emissions of energy use, CO2 emissions of construction materials and works, thermal comfort) for the final decision making. The findings of the article have confirmed that the high level of the building energy efficiency is not directly proportional to the overall investments, i.e. additional invest-ments do not bring benefits from economic and environmental points of view.