Climate change has become a global issue and is predicted to impact less-developed regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa, severely. Innovative, sustainable renewable energy systems are essential to mitigate climate change’s effects and unlock the region’s potential, especially with the increasing energy demands and population growth. The region relies heavily on fossil fuels, which calls for urgent action towards energy security and expansion. Hybrid floating solar photovoltaic-hydropower (FPV-HEP) technology has emerged as a cost-effective and transformative solution to accelerate the low-carbon energy transition in sub-Saharan Africa. The technology combines solar panels with existing hydropower infrastructure, ensuring energy security while reducing carbon emissions. This technology offers several benefits over conventional ground-mounted solar systems, including efficient land utilization, energy generation, and water conservation. However, its adoption remains challenging due to technical complexities and evolving regulatory frameworks. Despite these challenges, Nigerian energy professionals have preferred renewable alternatives, mainly distributed solar PV and FPV-HEP plants. This collective embrace of FPV and renewables reflects a growing understanding of their critical role in mitigating climate change through sustainable energy practices. This research aims to contribute to the existing body of knowledge and assist policymakers in making informed decisions on adopting this technology. It also stimulates further research on this topic, offering a new potential solution to the ever-increasing demand for green energy in the region to meet their sustainable development needs.

Over the past decade, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in influencing occupant productivity. Researchers have studied various buildings, including offices, schools, hospitals, and residential settings, to understand the relationship between IEQ and productivity outcomes. Studies have taken a multifactorial approach, considering multiple aspects of IEQ. Evidence from the literature review suggests that the quality of the indoor environment is an essential factor that affects the productivity of building occupants, and it is one of the fundamental issues in the development of societies. This area of research requires the responsible participation of researchers at all levels, as there is significant scope to contribute to knowledge. Therefore, this study aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the published literature on indoor environmental quality and its impact on building occupant productivity through the scientific literature available from one of the largest and most famous academic databases, Scopus; the study was determined in 2011 to 2023. The search used differential thresholds for IEQ keywords affecting building occupant productivity. Three discrete queries were performed, resulting in approximately 3861 publications. These were filtered by reducing false positives and excluding publications irrelevant to the research topic. The final results were 72 publications. This study also used Excel and VOS viewer to analyse and create graphs and network visualisation maps to show the growth of publications and their types, active countries and institutions for recovered publications, international collaboration, author keywords, active journals, and citation analysis. This study can significantly advance our understanding of building occupant productivity and enhance quality of life and work. Evaluating the research outputs is essential for highlighting contributions to knowledge and global collaboration in this research area. The potential impact of this study is not just theoretical. It can shape the future of our built environments and the lives of those occupying them.

The UK’s net-zero by 2050 commitment necessitates urgent housing sector decarbonisation, as residential buildings contribute approximately 17% of national emissions. Post-1950 construction prioritised speed over efficiency, creating energy-deficient housing stock that challenges climate objectives. Current retrofit policies focus primarily on technological solutions—insulation and heating upgrades—while neglecting broader sustainability considerations. This research advocates systematically integrating Circular Economy (CE) principles into residential retrofit practices. CE approaches emphasise material circularity, waste minimisation, adaptive design, and a lifecycle assessment, delivering superior environmental and economic outcomes compared to conventional methods. The investigation employs mixed-methods research combining a systematic literature analysis, policy review, stakeholder engagement, and a retrofit implementation evaluation across diverse UK contexts. Key barriers identified include regulatory constraints, workforce capability gaps, and supply chain fragmentation, alongside critical transition enablers. An evidence-based decision-making framework emerges from this analysis, aligning retrofit interventions with CE principles. This framework guides policymakers, industry professionals, and researchers in the development of strategies that simultaneously improve energy-efficiency, maximise material reuse, reduce embodied emissions, and enhance environmental and economic sustainability. The findings advance a holistic, systems-oriented approach, positioning housing as a pivotal catalyst in the UK’s transition toward a circular, low-carbon built environment, moving beyond isolated technological fixes toward a comprehensive sustainability transformation.

The Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 seeks to improve productivity of the UK construction industry by imposing on qualifying construction industry contracts a transparent payment protocol and a right to contractual parties to refer disputes for resolution by adjudication. A qualifying construction contract is defined to exclude certain types of construction industry contracts from the ambit of the legislation. These exclusions have been the subject of extensive and costly litigation concerning the demarcation between contracts types within, as against those outside, the legislation. Using legal research methods, this paper critically analyzes the issues in the litigation to extract implications for adjudication practice and policy review. As a reflection of the global nature of payment challenges and disputes on construction projects, the UK legislative intervention is being emulated in many countries. The UK experience therefore offers lessons on how the demarcation problem may be approached in other jurisdictions.

This study aims to understand the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic disruptive event on delivery of the built environment degree apprentice programme in higher education in the UK and identify the key strategies to minimise the effect. A qualitative approach was used to collect and analyse data from a sample set of built environment degree apprenticeship stakeholders. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 key stakeholders to collate emerging themes on their perceptions of the impacts of the pandemic and strategies to adopted to minimise it. The investigation reveals that the core impacts of Covid-19 on the apprentices training programme are lack of access to the site, furlough, limited access to off the job training, limited interaction with tutors and peers, too much time on the screen, limited pastoral care and lack of contact with a mentor. The census from the research participants is that despite the development and gain with the various virtual platform used during pandemic physical meetings with their mentor remain pivotal to the built environment apprentices learning and training. The results provide relevant stakeholders and actors supporting degree apprentices training programmes (training providers and employers, among others) with the information needed to improve the delivery of built environment degree apprenticeship training programmes during a disruptive event Covid-19. The study identifies various strategies to minimise the impact of disruptive events on the apprentices training, including technology, regular meeting with mentors online, and personal and pastoral care. The study is the first to document the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on degree apprenticeship programs in the built environment. This study provides an in-depth understanding of how these programs have been affected and offers potential solutions to reduce or mitigate potential damage. The research will inform future policy decisions related to degree apprenticeship programs in the built environment.

Buildings are experiencing tremendous transformation, where Internet of things (IoT) is been used to transform traditional buildings into smart structures. While there are viable IoT techniques, developing IoT applications and operations to fully realise the technology's promise is needed. This may be done successfully by bridging the gaps in the present research to establish a foundation for future investigations. This study analysed extant literature in IoT (between 2008 and 2022) through a bibliometric review to tease out critical measures for their integration and transformation. The study adopted a science mapping quantitative literature review approach and employed bibliometric and visualisation techniques to systematically investigate data. The Scopus database was used to collect data and VOSviewer software to analyse the data collected to determine the strengths, weights, clusters, research trends in IoT. Important findings emerging from the study include recent literature by various researchers on IoT applications in buildings. The shift in recent patterns of research from developed to developing countries. Eighty-nine (89) keywords were analysed and divided into six clusters. Each cluster is discussed to present its research area and associated future studies in relation to Smart buildings. This paper uses bibliometric analysis to unpick recent trends in IoT and its relevant application to buildings. The paper provides a blueprint for future IoT research and practice, needed awareness and future strategy directions for IoT applications in construction. This creates opportunities to transition to more sustainable construction sector