Building information modelling (BIM) has significantly influenced the construction industry. However, the existing BIM tools and frameworks within prefabricated buildings are minimal. This research study aims to identify the opportunities and barriers of integrating BIM in the Australian prefabrication industry. The research was carried out using a mixed method of literature review and questionnaire survey with 30 indudstry professionals. The literature review identified the key challenges associated with prefabricated buildings including construction discipline-specific, fabrication-specific issues and communication-specific issues. The survey results proved that the most significant BIM opportunities are minimizing design errors and discrepancy of final product model between designers and manufacturers and increasing mass customization. The study revealed that seamless and timely information exchange among key project stakeholders via a BIM system was identified as the most critical success factor to adopt BIM in the prefabrication industry. This research provides practical insights into how to utilize BIM effectively for prefabrication in the housing sector. The survey results document the opportunities and barriers to BIM integration and provide professional insights on how BIM can benefit the prefabrication. The study contributes to the body of knowledge on enhancing the productivity/practice of prefabrication through BIM integration within the Australian housing context.

While the Circular Economy in the built environment is often viewed in terms of recycling, more value can be obtained from buildings and physical components by their reuse, aided by stewardship and remanufacture, to ensure optimum performance capability. The use of cyber-physical information for online identification, examination and exchange of reusable components may improve their life-cycle management and circularity. To this end, a bi-directional data exchange system is established between physical building components and their virtual Building Information Modeling (BIM) counterparts, so that their life-cycle information—including history of ownership, maintenance record, technical specifications and physical condition—can be tracked, monitored and managed. The resultant prototype Cloud-based BIM platform is then adapted to support an ongoing product-service relationship between suppliers/providers and users/clients. A case study from a major new hospital, focusing upon an example of internal framed glazed systems, is presented for ”proof of concept” and to demonstrate the application of the proposed method. The result of the case study shows that, informed by the life-cycle data from the Cloud-BIM platform, a “lease with reuse” service option is able to deliver a lower total cost and less carbon intensity for each unit of frame-glazed module. This leads to a higher level of eco-efficiency, coupled with decreased consumption of material resources and reduced generation of waste. The research is expected to serve as a step forward in the era of Industry 4.0 and illuminate a more sophisticated way to manage building assets.

Despite the importance of proper risk management during the construction execution stage, the current studies mainly focus on risk management at the planning stage. In order to effectively manage risks and accomplish a project success, it is instrumental to manage and mitigate risks at the execution stage where the most of risks are actually occurred. Hence, this research aims to identify the most critical success factors for effective risk management at the execution stage of a construction project. A mixed method was adopted to identify the priorities among various success factors for risk management through a questionnaire survey, and follow-up interviews were conducted to retrieve more insights and lessons learnt from construction professionals. Total 55 construction professionals responded that a) Project management capacity; b) knowledge and experience; c) early involvement of contractors and d) socio-cultural forces are the most critical success factors for successful risk management during the execution stage. This research identified the critical success factors and its relative importance expected to provide a means for the construction professionals to prioritise critical success factors for risk management at the execution stage, and it will serve a risk management supporting tool to make a proper plan and decision on risks.

The green accommodation sectors are increasingly committed to implementing environmental management practices while enhancing guests’ pro-environmental behaviour. However, it is not easy to change tourists’ behaviour as there are many factors influencing tourists’ participation in green management actions. This paper argues that a combination of multiple factors such as visitor characteristics or previous environmental experience needs to be examined to determine how these factors are differently associated with the type of pro-environmental behaviour. In particular, this study also investigates how environmentally responsible tourist markets can engage differently in different types of pro-environmental behaviour. Visitors staying at the green accommodation in Kangaroo Island, South Australia, were studied using self-administered questionnaires. The findings of this study confirmed the significant role of environmentally responsible travel experience as a strong predictor of two types of pro-environmental behaviour (e.g., energy-saving and recycling vs. eco-product consumption behaviour) and its moderating effects on the relationship between visitor characteristics and pro-environmental behaviours (PEBs). Furthermore, this environmental-responsibility-based segmentation approach provides green-oriented accommodation sectors with some managerial implications for improving green accommodation practices that can be operated on different principles for two different targeted markets based on their environmental responsibility. This study recommends that more in-depth investigations of other barriers or facilitators of pro-environmental behaviour are necessary to fully address this issue and to ultimately influence tourists’ responsible support for environmental management practices implemented by the green accommodation sector.

Although they offer major advantages, smart cities present unprecedented risks and challenges. There are abundant discrete studies on risks related to smart cities; however, such risks have not been thoroughly understood to date. This paper is a systematic review that aims to identify the origin, trends, and categories of risks from previous studies on smart cities. This review includes 85 related articles published between 2000 and 2019. Through a thematic analysis, smart city risks were categorized into three main themes: organizational, social, and technological. The risks within the intersections of these themes were also grouped into (1) digital transformation, (2) socio-technical, and (3) corporate social responsibility. The results revealed that risk is a comparatively new topic in smart-city research and that little focus has been given to social risks. The findings indicated that studies from countries with a long history of smart cities tend to place greater emphasis on social risks. This study highlights the significance of smart city risks for researchers and practitioners, providing a solid direction for future smart-city research.