Most studies focused on the introduction of new technologies have not investigated the psychological factors affecting the willingness to use them or conducted empirical studies to explore whether willingness and actual construction safety knowledge-sharing behavior are associated with fewer construction incidents. We conducted face-to-face and LinkedIn open-ended interviews as well as a global survey to study the willingness and actual behavior to share construction knowledge via social software Web 2.0, Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile apps. Then, the Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM) for willingness and actual knowledge-sharing behavior, as well as the Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) Neural Network were used to illustrate the effect of various factors on predicting the willingness to share knowledge via Web 2.0, mobile apps and IoT. Results of the interviews found that practitioners use IoT for knowledge sharing, mainly because they do not want to fall behind the curve. PLS-SEM and MLP revealed that practitioners share construction safety knowledge are not driven by safety-related reasons such as safety awareness enhancement but perceived organization support from their companies. Employees who agree that their organization cared about their employees’ well-being was the strongest predictor in influencing people’s decision to use tools for knowledge sharing. Moreover, many respondents claimed that factors such as monetary rewards have little impact on motivating people to use tools for knowledge sharing.

The paper examines how building height is determined in the absence of building height regulatory restrictions. A model is developed for determining optimal height using simple neo-classical economic analysis; this is then tested using empirical data from Hong Kong. The results show that the observed building heights are consistent with the optimal height predicted by the model. In addition, it was also found that the point of optimality varied positively with the quality of the external environment. An important practical implication is that town planners and policy-makers can make use of the model as a benchmarking tool to assess and quantify the effect of imposing or relaxing height restrictions.

Site safety is one critical factor affecting the sustainability of skyscrapers and decoration, repair, and maintenance projects. Many newly-built skyscrapers exceed 50 storeys in Hong Kong and decoration, repair, and maintenance projects are widely performed to extend the lifespans of buildings. Although many cities do not contain skyscrapers at present, this will change in the future. Likewise, more decoration, repair, and maintenance projects will emerge. Thus, the present research, which compares the safety risks among the new and DSR projects, provides insights for builders, policymakers, and safety personnel. Moreover, research studies which rank and compare decoration, repair, and maintenance projects and new skyscraper constructions are scarce. The use of the evidence-based practice approach, which aims to narrow the gap between practice and academia in construction safety research, is the first of its kind. In this paper, we firstly provide a systematic literature review from 1999 to 2019 regarding construction safety, and then study the industry’s perspectives by analysing the construction practitioners’ interview results, court cases, and analytic hierarchy process survey results to compare them with the literature. It is found that the generation gap and prolonged working hours lead to accidents—a phenomenon which is unique in Hong Kong and absent from the literature. It also reveals that most accidents happen on new building sites due to tower crane failure, while those on DSR projects are linked with the circular saw. Although many of the contractors involved in new buildings are wealthier than DSR contractors, it is surprising to learn that lack of funding for safety is the most important factor linked to safety risks on the sites.