The establishment of net-zero-energy and net-zero-carbon buildings can offer significant opportunities to reduce environmental impact in the building sector. Several successful net-zero-energy buildings highlight the feasibility of reducing energy consumption via energy-efficient strategies and the use of renewable energy technologies. To comprehend the existing innovatory designs, techniques, and practices employed to achieve net-zero-energy buildings, this research aims to review the up-to-date advancements in net-zero-energy building practices. The utilization of embodied carbon assessments to achieve the net-zero status of buildings is explored. The findings indicate an escalating global interest and participation in the field of study, and reveal three major areas related to net-zero-energy buildings: multidisciplinary approaches, energy systems, and guidance, which together cover thirteen subfields. The role of life cycle assessment in buildings is emphasized, offering insights into the role of embodied emissions relative to operational emissions over the entire life cycle of a building. In the end, possible future study directions are outlined, including balancing energy efficiency with sustainability, and assessing the impact of design on emissions and economic outcomes. These areas collectively contribute to transforming sustainable building concepts into reality.

There is no clear holistic approach or methodology to assess the adoption of building information modeling (BIM) technology at corporate level. This paper proposes an approach for developing critical success factors (CSFs) that can be further developed for assessment of BIM adoption at organizational level in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. This first part of the paper presents an overview and literature review of important factors related to decision-making, technology implementation, or both aspects for an organization to adopt BIM technology. Then, discussions are given on the empirical approach proposed for developing CSFs through a questionnaire survey and a sequence of data analysis, a conceptual framework on BIM technology adoption developed to facilitate the questionnaire survey and BIM adoption assessment, and a questionnaire designed with 123 influencing factors (IFs) identified from the literature and domain experts. For the purpose of demonstration and validation of the proposed approach, this study conducted a survey in Taiwan’s AEC industry, and the data collected were examined by reliability and ranking analysis, including inferential statistical tests. Ranking analysis was employed to obtain 80 key factors (KFs) out of the 123 IFs. Among these KFs, three factors were found to be the most important: ‘support from top management’ and the ‘functionality’ and ‘design validation’ of BIM tools; two factors were found to be very important: ‘the definition of project goals before forming teams’ and ‘coordination and integration among the professions.’ Other findings are that owners perceive the ‘initial investment cost’ of BIM tools as more expensive than do the owners-cum-managers who manage projects themselves. Architects seem to find ‘LOD 300’ and ‘LOD 400’ more important than contractors. Further data analysis on the 80 KFs for developing CSFs for BIM adoption assessment will be presented in the second part of the paper, and finally, 58 CSFs are derived. Based on this study, the proposed approach is not only generally applicable for CSFs development in regions other than Taiwan, but also capable of handling the small number of questionnaire respondents commonly encountered in a society still at an early stage of BIM technology adoption.

Building information modeling (BIM) has entered into another phase of maturity, especially in countries that have been actively adopting and using BIM including in Taiwan, Republic of China. An effective management in BIM has increasingly become one of the demanding features in Taiwanese architecture, engineering, construction, and operation industries, particularly in dealing with the legal issues associated with BIM implementation. Therefore, the research aims to develop a preliminary contractual framework for BIM-based contract administration. Two objectives underpin the research, namely, (1) to identify the potential legal aspects that need to be considered in BIM-enabled projects, and (2) to determine the related contract provisions required in BIM contracts. The questionnaire survey method was adopted through a selective sampling approach in Taiwan. Thirty-six valid and completed questionnaires were analyzed. The results identify 21 related contract provisions that could potentially be used in BIM contracts. Following a thorough analytical discussion, these contract provisions were then incorporated into the developed contractual framework. While paving the way for a robust contractual mechanism for BIM-enabled projects in the future, the research contributes to the body of knowledge for BIM-based contract administration.