This research developed an assessment tool for enhancing the healing environment in healthcare buildings, especially interior finishing materials, based on sustainability standards, i.e., Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards and WELL building standards. The purpose of this tool is to help decision-makers, interior designers, and client committees to identify the compatible interior materials’ specifications with the healing and non-infection environment in order to create a better experience for patient, staff, and visitors. The current study adopts a sustainability-oriented approach to bring more objectivity for assessing the architectural finish in the healing environment at the healthcare projects through a case study of King Faisal University’s (KFU) hospital project with a 182,000 m² built area. Following the consensus of different experts, the assessment tool integrated two main international standards: LEED healthcare and WELL building standards, in addition to chromotherapy method. This tool assesses interior finishing materials, which affect the healing environment and sustainability in healthcare buildings. Each standard has credits, including items and scores for each item. The developed assessment tool was adopted in the KFU Hospital project, which has gained high acceptance among all stakeholders, including decision-makers. The developed tool is an integrated instrument (based on LEED standards, WELL standards, and chromotherapy method) for assessment; instead of using different tools for assessing finishing materials in healthcare buildings, the assessment tool supports all stakeholders in analyzing interior finishing material to achieve the optimum healing environment and sustainability.

Assessing water usage associated with urban green infrastructure is crucial for water resource management and sustainable planning of desert campus areas. A public university campus layout in the desert region is considered an urban city subject to urban water consumption (UWC) of significant intensity and extent, even though the urban layout is essential to all campus occupants’ comfort and environmental sustainability needs. Hence, there is a need to reduce its detrimental effects through sustainable methods for campus water content. This study focuses on assessing urban xeriscaping landscape quantities as a practical potential approach to support university campus decision-makers in reducing urban water consumption and preserving the urban campus water content as asset management and life quality. Four selected landscape field experiments were undertaken by adopting xeriscaping landscape design instead of existing conventional urban design at King Faisal University’s (KFU) campus layout, Al-Ahsaa, Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia. The study built a specific practical sustainability retrofit approach in water conservation from conventional to xeriscaping method inside the existing public desert campus area. Applying the study approach framework considering xeriscaping layout design provided sustainability requirements, retrofit approach, and pathway to effective landscape mapping, based on reasonable and accurate quantities of xeriscaping landscape items, to convert the KFU campus layout as a low water consumption campus with an average reduction of 41% water consumption within the remaining campus layout. The results of this study contribute to the water conservation and management in university desert campus and opens the door for other studies on the use of this approach for thermal reduction, economic and environmental benefits beside its value for water reduction.

Optimizing a net-zero energy (NZE) residential building using what renewable energy resources are available in desert environments and budgeted within the limits of a governmental construction project is proving to be increasingly challenging for many countries, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Buildings in such regions encounter significantly high annual energy consumption rates, especially in the cooling capacity across a project’s life cycle, which in turn impacts the investment value. Therefore, this study presents a heuristic approach that aimed to examine the feasibility of NZE residential buildings in the KSA using an arid campus case study within the period of 2021–2022 based on the dual renewable energy sources of a geothermal heat pump (GHP), which served as a cooling system, and photovoltaic thermal collectors (PVT) serving as a power generation system. This study adopted a numerical technical assessment in the case study, using HAP software to analyze heating/cooling systems, and PVsyst V7.1.0 software for the variable simulation of solar photovoltaic power systems. This heuristic approach, through two assessment stages, achieved significant outcomes for a sustainable bottom-line, and provide a practical approach for achieving an NZE residential building in the King Faisal University (KFU) case study, as well as a reduction in energy consumption as well as the maintenance cost, which has a positive consequence on the payback period. Our study’s results have implications for both sustainable and green buildings with similar characteristics to those we investigated, and our results could be used to develop installation guidelines for renewable energy systems. Furthermore, our results can provide decision makers with a basis for retrofitting existing buildings to enhance their energy efficiency, increase investment value, as well as prevent the indiscriminate installation of renewable energy sources to merely increase the renewable energy installation rate.

The construction of large underground caverns fundamentally differs from building and above ground civil infrastructure projects due to their complex geometries and variable geological conditions. These projects are complex and challenging because a large amount of data is generated from dispersed, independent, and heterogeneous sources. The underground construction industry often uses traditional project management techniques to manage complex interactions between these data sources that are hardly linked, and independent decisions are often made without considering all the relevant aspects. In this context, cavern construction exhibits uncertainties and risks due to unforeseen circumstances, an intricate design, and ineffective information management. Existing research has considered general BIM semantic models at the design stage; however, the digital transformation of cavern construction remains underdeveloped and fails to integrate digital construction throughout the project lifecycle. To address that gap, a novel BIM-based multi-model cavern information modeling framework is presented here to improve project management, construction, and delivery by integrating multiple interlinked data models and project performance data for large underground cavern construction. Data models of cavern construction processes are linked to propose an extension of the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) schema based on the cavern-specific elements, relationships, and property set definitions. To illustrate the potential of the proposed framework, a theoretical application to the powerhouse cavern construction is presented. The results indicate that the framework has significant potential to improve construction efficiency and safety and establish a robust foundation for the digital transformation of underground cavern projects. The theoretical implementation on the Neelum–Jhelum powerhouse cavern showed that the framework enabled a 92 m cavern realignment to avoid fault zones, achieved a 12.4% reduction in rock bolt usage, and a 9.8% reduction in shotcrete volume. These quantitative improvements illustrate its potential to enhance safety, reduce material costs, and optimize construction efficiency compared to conventional workflows.

The integration of sustainability standards and value engineering methods in public education projects is a significant concern, as it ensures the well-being and sustainability goals of students, lecturers, and employees. This study aims to enhance sustainability within public education campuses by utilizing value engineering processes that establish a balanced correlation between the available budget costs and the sustainability costs that affect educational objectives, strategies, and the overall sustainability of the environment. In order to evaluate the integration of value engineering and the sustainability rating system “LEED protocols” for schools, the study utilized HAP (Hourly Analysis Program) software to perform numerical analysis, with the objective of improving environmental efficiency and cost-effectiveness in school buildings from the perspective of both male and female students. By applying this approach to all engineering disciplines, systems, and materials involved in the project, the study achieved impressive results, including a reduction in energy usage by 53.67%, a cost reduction of 27.48% from the total project budget, and 13 points earned in credit C1 and credit C2 in the Energy and Atmosphere EA category in LEED 2009. These findings are of great importance for the planning and execution of construction projects, specifically in the context of educational infrastructure, and provide valuable insights into the construction and renovation of school buildings, which can be used to enhance the safety, functionality, and aesthetic appeal of these facilities.

This study aims to identify the causes of excessive change orders and their impact on public construction projects in Saudi Arabia. This should support the organizations working in the construction industry to improve variation order management (VOM) as a preventive action by dealing proactively with variation order causes. Therefore, a new methodology was proposed to minimize change orders and their impact on the successful completion of projects as well as cost during the project lifecycle. The methodology involved ten selected turnkey building projects at King Faisal University (KFU) campus, Saudi Arabia. Statistical analyses were conducted to predict the cost overrun in project size and contract value. The findings showed the most significant causes leading to variation order in public construction projects. These include the combined effect of the designer and owner technical committee, designer document, and owner stakeholder committee. Hence, a new model for VOM was developed as a best practice approach, including three stages. The first stage is the initiation process, which includes seven procedures, seven tools, and key responsibilities. The second stage deals with the course of change orders based on a certain number of procedures and weight for each parameter assigned to this phase. It supports decision processes based on a certain average ratio of weights calculation. The third stage is the decision to support decision makers in proceeding or not proceeding with the variation order. Although the present study was conducted in Saudi Arabia’s public building construction project, it is envisaged that these research results are widely applicable to other developing countries. The paper presents a direction for further research to enhance the impact of cost overrun in public sector construction projects in developing countries, i.e., Saudi Arabia.