Green construction technologies (GCTs) are important drivers of sustainable development in the construction industry. Despite a wide range of GCTs being available on the Chinese construction market, they are not yet widely popular. This study aims to evaluate the critical barriers hampering large-scale GCT adoption in China. Through a literature review, 21 barriers were identified and listed in the questionnaire survey, and 225 valid responses from 21 provinces in China were collected. The Mann–Whitney U test was conducted to verify whether different stakeholder groups perceive these barriers differently. Moreover, a comparative analysis of barriers to GCT, GBT (green building technologies), and GC (green construction) adoption was conducted. Results of statistical analyses showed that the top five barriers inhibiting GCT adoption are “lack of government incentives”, “extra costs associated with GCTs”, “dependence on traditional construction technology”, “a shortage of technological training for project staff”, and “conflicts of interest among stakeholders in GCT adoption”. Moreover, the top five factors preventing the adoption of GCTs differ from those of GBTs and GCs. This study not only provides valuable resources for stakeholders to better understand the critical factors preventing GCT adoption, but also could help policy makers to effectively promote GCT adoption.

Microsensors were applied to study the diffusion reaction and activity of a nitrogen species of deposit sediment from a drinking water supply system. Microprofiles of dissolved oxygen (DO), NH₄⁺-N, NO₃⁻-N, and NO₂⁻N in the sediment indicated that the DO concentration decreased from the highest at the sediment surface to zero at the bottom of the sediment. Similarly, with the increase of depth, NH₄⁺-N initially increased rapidly and then decreased slowly, while the concentration of NO₃⁻-N reached a maximum at around 6000 μm and then decreased to about 0.1 mg·L⁻¹ near the bottom of the sediment. Almost no change was observed for NO₂⁻-N. The decrease of NH₄⁺-N and DO corresponded well with the increase of NO₃⁻-N. Furthermore, based on a consumption and production rate analysis, DO has always been consumed; the NH₄⁺-N consumption rate increased rapidly within 0–1000 μm, reaching about 14 mg·L⁻¹·S⁻¹·10⁻⁹. A small amount of NH₄⁺-N was produced in 2000–6000 μm, which could be attributed to denitrification activity. There was no change deeper than 6000 μm, while NO₃⁻-N was produced at a depth between 0 and 6000 μm and was consumed in the deeper zone. At the depth of 9000 μm, the NO₃⁻-N consumption reached a maximum of 5 mg·L⁻¹·S⁻¹·10⁻⁹. The consumption of DO and NH₄⁺-N, which corresponded with the production of NO₃⁻-N in a specific microscale range within the sediment, demonstrated nitrification and denitrification activities. In addition, the time required for the diffusion of only DO, NH₄⁺-N, NO₃⁻-N, and NO₂⁻-N was estimated as 14 days; however, in the practical, even after 60 days of operation, there was still a continuous reaction, which provided further evidence towards microbial activities within the sediment.

Safety education and training for employees is important to ensure the safety of construction and improve the safety awareness of employees. It is difficult to meet the needs of the new situation of safety production with traditional safety education and training consequences of construction enterprises. To address this deficiency, this research analyzed the formation mechanism of safety behavior of personnel at different levels in construction enterprises from the perspective of behaviorist psychology and studied their different needs for safety training, designing training programs for simple safety behavior and complex safety behavior according to the degree of difficulty of the training content. This research also developed and tested models of training frequency and training times and carried out corresponding experimental research. Through the experiments of “safety behavior by wearing a helmet” and “fire control consciousness training”, it was found that the training of consciousness of relatively complex safety behavior should follow the principles that each training should last longer and the training interval should not be too short, so as to minimize the cost of safety education and training while ensuring the quality of safety education and training.

The project delivery mode is an extremely important link in the life cycle of water engineering. Many cases show that increases in the costs, construction period, and claims in the course of the implementation of water engineering are related to the decision of the project delivery mode in the early stages. Therefore, it is particularly important to choose a delivery mode that matches the water engineering. On the basis of identifying the key factors that affect the decision on the project delivery system and establishing a set of index systems, a comprehensive decision of engineering transaction is essentially considered to be a fuzzy multi-attribute group decision. In this study, intuitionistic fuzzy entropy was used to determine the weight of the influencing factors on the engineering transaction mode; then, intuitionistic fuzzy entropy was used to determine the weight of decision experts. Thus, a comprehensive scheme-ranking model based on an intuitionistic fuzzy hybrid average (IFHA) operator and intuitionistic fuzzy weighted average (IFWA) operator was established. Finally, a practical case analysis of a hydropower station further demonstrated the feasibility, objectivity, and scientific nature of the decision model.

The success of construction projects heavily depends on the compliance of parties with ethical codes of conduct. Unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) may serve as a barrier to close collaboration between parties. Although empowering leadership is generally considered to be beneficial to project management, this study argues that empowering leadership may unintentionally increase the tendency of employees to adopt UPB. The aim of this study is to uncover the influencing mechanism underlying empowering leadership and UPB by introducing the mediating role of role stress. It is hypothesized that empowering leadership can enhance employees’ role stress, thereby increasing the engagement of UPB. Moreover, organizational goal clarity can ease the negative effect of empowering leadership. With data collected from experienced construction professionals, the results of the covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) supported the hypothesis. The findings help in understanding why employees may adopt unethical behaviors when they feel high levels of role stress that are caused by empowerment. Theoretically, the study enriches the literature on empowering leadership and UPB in the construction context. In practice, managers are reminded about the adverse effect of empowering leadership on employees’ unethical behaviors. Organizational management tools are suggested to assist in assigning work appropriate to employees’ roles. Regular checks and feedback about organizational goals are also necessary to confirm compliant behaviors and progress.

Along with the increasing number of prefabricated buildings being constructed in China each year, the incident rate of hoisting operations has been continuously rising. In order to improve construction safety in hoisting operations of prefabricated buildings, this paper analyzes the construction workers’ unsafe behaviors using the Hazard and Operability (HAZOP) method. A questionnaire survey and a literature review were first performed to gather information on safety risks and influencing factors during each stage of hoisting operations, and the survey results were statistically analyzed using the SPSS software. Next, HAZOP was applied to identify the deviation and change of the unsafe behaviors as well as their causes, consequences, and countermeasures. Finally, a case study was presented to verify the effectiveness of the countermeasures through a comparison and evaluation method from experimental economics. This paper demonstrates the use of HAZOP to analyze construction workers’ unsafe behaviors in hoisting operations of prefabricated buildings, and effective countermeasures in each stage of hoisting operations are proposed to mitigate unsafe behaviors. This paper therefore provides an innovative method and a theoretical foundation for reducing unsafe behaviors in hoisting operations of prefabricated buildings and serves as a reference for decision-making for hoisting safety policies in prefabricated construction projects.