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Construction development of Commercial and Recreational Complex Building Projects (CRCBPs) is one of the community needs of many developing countries. Since the implementation of these projects is usually very costly, identifying and evaluating their Critical Risk Factors (CRFs) are of significant importance. Therefore, the current study aims to identify and prioritize CRFs of CRCBPs in the Iranian context. A descriptive-survey method was used in this research, the statistical population, selected based on the purposive sampling method, includes 30 construction experts with hands-on experience in CRCBPs. A questionnaire related to the risk identification stage was developed based on a detailed study of the research literature and also using the Delphi survey method, 82 various risks were finally identified. In order to confirm the opinions of experts in identifying the potential risks, Kendall’s coefficient of concordance was used. In the first stage of data analysis, qualitative evaluation was performed by calculating the severity of risk effect and determining the cumulative risk index, based on which 25 CRFs of CRCBPs were identified for more accurate evaluation. At this stage, the identified CRFs were evaluated based on multi-criteria decision-making techniques and using the TOPSIS technique. Results show that the ten CRFs of CRCBPs are external threats from international relations, exchange rate changes, bank interest rate fluctuations, traffic licenses, access to skilled labor, changes in regional regulations, the condition of adjacent buildings, fluctuations and changes in inflation, failure to select a suitable and qualified consultant, and employer’s previous experiences and records. Obviously, the current study’s results and findings can be considered by CRCBPs in both the private and public sectors for proper effective risk identification, evaluation, and mitigation.

Construction projects are associated with a number of uncertainties due to their expanse, complex nature, uniqueness, and dynamic states. Risks in construction projects are, indeed, the events or uncertain situations that can have negative or positive consequences on the project objectives. Many of the risks inherent in construction projects affect each other. For example, the time risk in construction projects can affect the cost risk and vice versa. The intertwined relations between risk factors are ignored in the traditional construction risk assessment methods. To fulfill this gap, this paper proposes an integrated fuzzy DEMATEL-fuzzy ANP model to evaluate construction projects and their overall risks by considering intertwined relations among risk factors. Fuzzy DEMATEL is used to determine the interrelationships and interdependencies among risk factors. The network structure for implementing the fuzzy ANP method is extracted based on the results of fuzzy DEMATEL. The fuzzy ANP is applied to assess the relative importance of risk factors and alternatives and prioritize construction projects. The proposed integrated model is used to evaluate five construction projects based on risk factors in Isfahan, Iran. The results of applying the integrated model reveal that the time, cost and safety risks with the weight values of 0.056, 0.038, and 0.034 are the most important factors among construction risks, respectively. The results reveal that the proposed model can help managers to evaluate the overall risks of construction projects, and select the best project that has the lowest risk.

Choosing proper projects has a great impact on organizational success. Firms have various factors for choosing projects based on their different objectives and strategies. The problem of optimization of projects&rsquo, risks and returns is among the most prevalent issues in project portfolio selection. In order to optimize and select proper projects, the amount of projects&rsquo, expected risks and returns must be evaluated correctly. Determining the relevant distribution is very important in achieving these expectations. In this research, various types of practical distributions were examined, and considering expected and realized risks, the effects of choosing the different distribution on estimation of risks on construction projects were studied.

In developing countries, governments are often unable to implement urban infrastructure construction projects (UICPs) on their own, mainly due to budget and financial resource limitations. The participation of the private sector, through public–private partnerships (PPPs), has been considered as an alternative effective method for increasing the efficiency and productivity of urban infrastructure development. However, in many developing countries such as those situated in the Middle East, attracting private sector investments for UICPs uncovers profound challenges that have not ever been comprehensively accounted for and prioritized. To fill this knowledge gap, this study seeks to determine and prioritize the major barriers and risks faced by governments and urban managers in attracting private sector investments through the PPP schemes launched by developing countries in the Middle East. Based on a Delphi study conducted in Iran as an example, the opinions of 60 UICPs experts in both the public and private sectors were collected and analyzed. Results show that technical and organizational barriers and risks were perceived as the most important to private sector participation, followed by economic and financial barriers and risks, and then political and legal barriers and risks., This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability and Risks in Construction Management

The construction industry is a vital part of the modern economic system. Construction work often has significant negative impacts on the environment and sustainable economic development, such as degradation of the environment, depletion of resources, and waste generation. Therefore, environmental concerns must be taken into account when evaluating and making decisions in the construction industry. In this regard, sustainable construction is considered as the best way to avoid resource depletion and address environmental concerns. Selection of sustainable building materials is an important strategy in sustainable construction that plays an important role in the design and construction phase of buildings. The assessment of experts is one of the most important steps in the material selection process, and their subjective judgment can lead to unpredictable uncertainty. The existing methods cannot effectively demonstrate and address uncertainty. This paper proposes an integrated Dempster-Shafer (DS) theory of evidence and the ARAS method for selecting sustainable materials under uncertainty. The Dempster-Shafer Evidence Theory is a relatively new and appropriate tool for substantiating decisions when information is nonspecific, ambiguous, or conflicting. The Additive Ratio Assessment (ARAS) method has many advantages to deal with MCDM problems with non-commensurable and even conflicting criteria and to obtain the priority of alternatives based on the utility function. The proposed method converts experts’ opinions into the basic probability assignments for real alternatives, which are suitable for DS evidence theory. It uses the ARAS method to obtain final estimation results. Finally, a real case study identifying the priority of using five possible alternative building materials demonstrates the usefulness of the proposed approach in addressing the challenges of sustainable construction. Four main criteria including economic, social, environmental, and technical criteria and 25 sub-criteria were considered for the selection of sustainable materials. The specific case study using the proposed method reveals that the weight of economic, socio-cultural, environmental, and technical criteria are equal to 0.327, 0.209, 0.241, and 0.221, respectively. Based on these results, economic and environmental criteria are determined as the most important criteria. The results of applying the proposed method reveal that aluminum siding with a final score of 0.538, clay brick with a score of 0.494, and stone façade with a final score of 0.482 are determined as the best alternatives in terms of sustainability.

Nanotechnology plays a significant role in construction industry. The construction industry has been employed nanomaterials to improve the performance of construction components and the safety of the structure and to reduce the energy consuming and the cost of maintenance. In other words, nanotechnology has a substantial impact on the construc­tion industry. Therefore, it is necessary to identify and evaluate the critical factors of the application of nanotechnology in construction in order to concentrate on the most critical factors. However, several techniques have been developed to prioritize the evaluation criteria. Analytical network process (ANP) technique, a branch of multi criteria decision mak­ing (MCDM) methods, is a powerful tool to rank a limited number of criteria. This technique takes into account both tangible and intangible criteria in the process of formulation of a decision making problem. This method is capable of handling all types of independence and dependence relationships. On the other hand, intuitionistic fuzzy set (IFS) is a well-known technique in considering the inherent uncertainty involved in the process of modelling a decision making problem. In this paper, a new model based on the IFS and ANP technique is proposed to evaluate the critical factors of the application of nanotechnology in the construction industry. The results demonstrate that the proposed model has a high potential for taking into account the uncertainty in the form of a three dimension function, including membership, non-membership, and non-determinacy.

Sustainable development is first defined as development that satisfies the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to satisfy theirs. Sustainable development is possible if conditions of respect for the environment, preventing the exhaustion of natural resources and preserving the overall balance, are fulfilled. The necessity of the development and maintenance of habitats also emphasized. Construction processes have important role in creation of built environment and their impacts have to be measured as construction contributes to air pollution, land use and contamination, usage of resources, water and materials depletion, water pollution, impacts on human health, and climate change. Previous (own) research revealed, that the key categories of Web of Science, which encompass the research on the sustainable built environment, cover construction and building technologies, environmental science and studies, and civil engineering. The article presents a review of the literature on efforts to harmonize the construction processes, which was made on the basis of the Web of Science Core Collection database. The analysis of the number of publications was made according to years of publication and research areas. To honour the contribution made by Prof Oleg Kaplinski in the field of Sustainable Development and Decision-Making, and to commemorate his 75th anniversary, this article also highlights his academic career and research.

In this study, Monte Carlo simulation and Bayesian network methods are combined to present a structure for assessing the aggregated impact of risks on the completion time of a construction project. Construction projects often encounter different risks which affect and prevent their desired completion at the predicted time and budget. The probability of construction project success is increased in the case of controlling influential risks. On the other hand, interactions among risks lead to the increase of aggregated impact of risks. This fact requires paying attention to assessment and management of project aggregated risk before and during the implementation phase. The developed structure of this article considers the interactions among risks to provide an indicator for estimating the effects of risks, so that the shortage of extant models including the lack of attention to estimate the aggregated impact caused by risks and the intensifying impacts can be evaluated. Moreover, the introduced structure is implemented in an industrial case study in order to validate the model, cover the functional aspect of the problem, and explain the procedure of structure implementation in detail., This article belongs to the Special Issue Occupational Safety and Risks in Construction

Currently, the construction sector is facing requirements for higher quality and efficiency standards as well as objectives related to value creation. In construction, rational decision-making problems often involve creating a unique complex of criteria, which must consider multiple requirements and conditions. The paper presents the developed model for the selection of multi-layered external walls of a residential building. The model considers the following aspects and parameters: time, cost, quality, environmental conditions, aspects of sustainable development, and problemsolving benefits received from the assessment of alternatives and the development of the model. Game theory was used to calculate the defining rational decision. For the calculations was used game theory: Bayes, Wald’s rule, Savage criterion, Laplace’s rule. This study presents the developed model for the selection of multi-layered external walls of a residential building and calculation results based on game-theory rules, which are effective tools for rational decisionmaking.

In recent years, the Zayanderood River in Isfahan-Iran has been encountered by hydrological imbalance and drought. Literature review shows that long-term climate change, drought, and disruption of the river’s water supply has led to depletion of underground aquifers and, consequently, gradual subsidence of the river and serious damage to old buildings and structures along the riverbank. This fact would be followed up by adverse environmental, social, and economic effect that could threaten the sustainable development of urban space. Therefore, it is necessary to use efficient risk identification and assessment approaches toward a more effective risk management. The goal of this study is to identify and prioritize the risks of river drought with regards to all three sustainable development areas including environmental, social, and economic. The research methodology was a mixed field method that included a set of questionnaires and interviews. To evaluate collected data, the analytic network process (ANP) method was used. Eighteen important risks were identified. Based on the results, decrease in the groundwater level, climate change, and gradual soil degradation were ranked first, second, and third, respectively. As this study examined the impacts of river drought on all three areas of sustainable development simultaneously and comprehensively, it is expected that the results will fill the existing theoretical and practical gap affecting improvements in assessment and management of sustainable development risks., This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability and Risks in Construction Management

This study proposes a framework for the allocation of risk in public private partnerships (PPP) projects. Its contribution lies in the recognition and incorporation of risks introduced by project stakeholders, and as articulated by the principal-agent theory (PAT). The framework assesses risks and routes these risks to those parties best equipped to mitigate their impact on the project. This allocation of risk is facilitated by a thirteen-step process. The practical benefit of this study lies in outlining a clear, systematic method for allocating risk efficiently to both the government and private enterprise parties of the project. In so doing, risk mitigation can be expected to improve project performance, optimize stakeholder goals, and enhance sustainability objectives, including improved operational life-cycle efficiency and elevated social and community benefits., This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability and Risks in Construction Management

Construction works are among the riskiest activities in Lithuania. To develop a sustainable environment at a construction site, risk factors must be first identified and then eliminated. Each case of a construction site, construction conditions and the project environment is unique. Thus, risks must be individually assessed considering distinguishing features of the construction works and the environmental conditions. Consequently, preconditions exist for the development of a new risk assessment model comprising risk assessment norms, the construction project and conditions of the construction processes. Expert evaluation and the TODIM method were used for the risk assessment of finishing works. Two construction sites were used to assess construction risks related to finishing works. The article presents risk assessment results based on the riskiest job at a construction site of finishing works as well as the line of priorities of the riskiest workplace.

Globally, the efficiency of the construction sector has declined around the world over the past 30 years. The main principles aimed at the improvement of the situation are based on lean construction. The concept of lean construction can be effectively used in the strategic process to improve waste reduction as well as cost and time efficiency, which results in positive outcomes such as environmental protection, economy and time-saving. Lean construction practices help to achieve significant benefits. However, many organisations still find it difficult to successfully and correctly integrate lean concepts. The research literature indicates that the construction industry has encountered poor implementation and integration of these concepts. Lean construction has eight main techniques for increasing productivity in implementing customer requirements in the construction industry. Having in mind that lean is the key requirement for gaining construction productivity, this paper provides the basic fundamental knowledge of lean construction. Also, it shows how to get the most effective results by applying the Last Planner System technique. The described case study demonstrates the integration of the Last Planner System technique into the project.

The article focuses on the identification and classification of key risk management criteria that represent the value creation and protection aspects for the construction industry. Nowadays, the assessment of the risk level of a construction project is especially important for the quality of construction projects as well as the growth of enterprises and the sector. To establish the most important criteria for the successful growth of the construction sector including value creation and protection aspects are developed.

In a situation of growing water demand, inadequate public funding, poor asset condition and lack of maintenance in developing countries, public-private partnerships (PPPs) play an important role in the development of infrastructure, such as water supply and sewerage services. The purpose of this study is to develop a quantitative approach to appropriate risk allocation, with attention directed to the impact of positive and negative factors in water and sewerage projects. The paper presents a hybrid SWARA-COPRAS approach to examine risk allocation, particularly for PPP water supply and sewerage projects in the context of Malaysia. In addition to PPP infrastructure projects, the approach has the potential to be adapted to other applications. The proposed method enables decision makers to utilise qualitative linguistic terms in the allocation of risk between the public and private sector, and to select the best strategy for risk allocation in a contract. Finally, 24 significant risks were identified: six risks would preferably be allocated to the public sector, while seven risks would be assigned to the private sector, and eleven risks would preferably be shared by both parties. The finding from this study can help the government of Malaysia to determine an attractive political strategy for private investors to support a PPP water and sewerage infrastructure project.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is inhibited by political risk. Developing countries tend to experience higher levels of such risk, yet need foreign capital to generate growth. Moreover, foreign direct investment in infrastructure (FDII) – fundamental to economic growth – is particularly sensitive to political risk; characterized by high capital investment, longer investment periods, while especially exposed to mercurial shifts in government policy. Yet, no comprehensive study has been undertaken that measures the impact of political risk on FDII in developing countries. This paper addresses this lack. Twelve political risk indicators, drawn from the International Country Risk Guide Index, are used to quantify the political risk inherent to 90 developing countries, over the period 2006 to 2015. An Arellano-Bond GMM estimator is developed which measures the dollar value impact of risk on both FDI and FDII. A comparison of results confirms that FDII is generally more sensitive to risk than is FDI, however the influence of risk categories is found to vary significantly. The findings can be expected to inform infrastructure policy-makers and foreign investors alike on the dollar-impact of determinable risk levels on foreign-funded projects, and in so doing better facilitate corrective risk mitigation strategies.

The article focuses on a developed comprehensive model to be used in an agile environment for the risk assessment and selection based on multi-attribute methods. The model is based on a multi-attribute evaluation of risk in construction, and the determination of their optimality criterion values are calculated using complex Multiple Criteria Decision-Making methods. The model may be further applied to risk assessment in an agile construction environment. The attributes of risk in a construction project are selected by applying the risk assessment condition to the construction sector, and the construction process efficiency in the construction industry accounts for the agile environment. The paper presents the comprehensive risk assessment model in an agile construction environment. 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Due to the increasing population and earth pollution, managing construction and infrastructure projects with less damage to the environment and less pollution is very important. Sustainable development aims at reducing damage to the environment, making projects economical, and increasing comfort and social justice. This study proposes fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and improved grey relational analysis (GRA) to assess construction projects based on the sustainable development criteria. For doing so, sustainable development criteria are first identified in economic, social, and environmental dimensions using literature review, and are then customized for urban construction projects using experts’ opinions. After designing questionnaires and collecting data, fuzzy AHP is used for determining the importance of sustainable development criteria and their subcriteria. Then, improved GRA is employed for assessing six recreational, commercial, and official centers in Isfahan regarding the weights of criteria and subcriteria. The proposed fuzzy AHP-improved GRA help us to prioritize construction projects based on the sustainable development criteria. The results of applying fuzzy AHP show that the weights of economic, social, and environmental criteria are equal to 0.330, 0.321, and 0.349, respectively, which are close to each other. This means that the importance of all three aspects of sustainability is almost equal to each other. Furthermore, “Having profits for the society”, “Increasing social justice”, and “Adherence to environmental policies” are identified as the most important indicators of sustainable development in terms of economic, social, and environmental aspects, respectively. Finally, the results of employing improved GRA determine Negin Chaharbagh recreational and commercial complex as the best project.

An organization’s strategic objectives are accomplished through portfolios. However, the materialization of portfolio risks may affect a portfolio’s sustainable success and the achievement of those objectives. Moreover, project interdependencies and cause–effect relationships between risks create complexity for portfolio risk analysis. This paper presents a model using Bayesian network (BN) methodology for modeling and analyzing portfolio risks. To develop this model, first, portfolio-level risks and risks caused by project interdependencies are identified. Then, based on their cause–effect relationships all portfolio risks are organized in a BN. Conditional probability distributions for this network are specified and the Bayesian networks method is used to estimate the probability of portfolio risk. This model was applied to a portfolio of a construction company located in Iran and proved effective in analyzing portfolio risk probability. Furthermore, the model provided valuable information for selecting a portfolio’s projects and making strategic decisions.

Multi-stakeholder based construction projects are subject to potential risk factors due to dynamic business environment and stakeholders’ lack of knowledge. When solving project management tasks, it is necessary to quantify the main risk indicators of the projects. Managing these requires suitable risk mitigation strategies to evaluate and analyse their severity. The existence of information asymmetry also causes difficulties with achieving Pareto efficiency. Hence, to ensure balanced satisfaction of all participants, risk evaluation of these projects can be considered as an important part of the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) process. In real-life problems, evaluation of project risks is often uncertain and even incomplete, and the prevailing methodologies fail to handle such situations. To address the problem, this paper extends the analytical network process (ANP) methodology in the D numbers domain to handle three types of ambiguous information’s, viz. complete, uncertain, and incomplete, and assesses the weight of risk criteria. The D numbers based approach overcomes the deficiencies of the exclusiveness hypothesis and completeness constraint of Dempster–Shafer (D–S) theory. Here, preference ratings of the decision matrix for each decision-maker are determined using a D numbers extended consistent fuzzy preference relation (D-CFPR). An extended multi-attributive border approximation area comparison (MABAC) method in D numbers is then developed to rank and select the best alternative risk response strategy. Finally, an illustrative example from construction sector is presented to check the feasibility of the proposed approach. For checking the reliability of alternative ranking, a comparative analysis is performed with different MCDM approaches in D numbers domain. Based on different criteria weights, a sensitivity analysis of obtained ranking of the hybrid D-ANP-MABAC model is performed to verify the robustness of the proposed method.

Attracting new customers can be identified as one of the key roles websites play in the tourism and hotels industry that can be of special importance for less known tourist destinations, especially for rural tourism. However, some of current researches indicate that many first-time visitors spend a very short time on a particular webpage when accessing a particular website. Therefore, if we presume that the acquisition of new customers is one of the features of a website, such a website should be designed to obtain the attention of the first-time visitors and to keep them. Various elements of websites essential for obtaining the attention of website visitors and crucial for their satisfaction have been identified in numerous studies. As opposed to these studies, this paper focuses on designing a multiple criteria model that could realistically determine the quality of the website from the first-time visitors’ point of view. In order to form a realistic multiple criteria decision making model, the proposed approach is based on the use of a smaller number of criteria that are evaluated using Atanassov fuzzy sets. Also, in order to create a model which as simple as possible, based on Atanassov fuzzy sets, this approach uses the Singleton Intuitionistic Fuzzy Numbers. The use of the proposed approach for assessing the quality of some websites which promote tourist potentials of the Old Mountain indicates the applicability and efficiency of the proposed approach. Finally, with the proposed, or with some other, set of criteria, while retaining a relatively small number of criteria, the proposed approach can be successfully applied to the tourism and hotels industry, as well as to other areas, with the aim of determining the quality of the websites from the first-time visitors’ point of view.

Greening the supply chain is an increasingly important concern for many business enterprises and a challenge for logistics management. Critical functions within green supply chain management are internal improvements and selection of green suppliers. This study proposes a novel, hybrid model that addresses dependent relationships between various criteria and the vague information coming from decision-makers. The Decision-making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) technique structures the relationships among criteria, thereby constructing an influential network relationship map (INRM). Meanwhile the DEMATEL-based, analytical network process (ANP) method aids in obtaining influential weights of the criteria. Decision-makers may hold diverse opinions and preferences due to incomplete information, differences in knowledge or simply conflicts that are inherent between various departments. This can make it difficult to judge the performance of alternatives. One remedy is to apply a modified COmplex PRopor...

Risk management is an important field of construction industry and has gained more importance internationally due to the latest researches carried out on a large scale. However, this relatively new field requires more attention to bring some benefit. Construction projects are facing a number of risks which have negative effects on project objects such as time, cost and quality. This study is based on findings of a questionnaire-based survey on risk management in construction projects in Pakistan, reporting the significance of different type of risk, ultimate responsibility for them and the effectiveness of some most common risk management techniques practiced in the industry. Two types of risk management techniques were considered: preventive techniques which can be used before the start of a project to manage risks that are anticipated during the project execution; and remedial techniques that are used during the execution phase once a risk has already occurred. The study revealed that financial issues for projects, accidents on site and defective design are the most significant risks affecting most of construction projects. As further reported, the contractor is responsible for management of most risks occurring at sites during the implementation phase, such as issues related to subcontractors, labour, machinery, availability of materials and quality, while the client is responsible for the risks such as financial issues, issues related to design documents, changes in codes and regulations, and scope of work. Further reported results of the analysis demonstrate that the production of proper schedule by getting updated data of the project and guidance from previous similar projects are the most effective preventive risk management techniques while close supervision and coordination within projects are the most effective remedial risk management techniques. It may be concluded that the most significant risks must be managed with greater effort to reduce/eliminate their effects on the project. As the study concludes, preparation of a proper schedule and good coordination during the implementation stage are very important as they may help project managers to focus on critical areas for better management of projects in Pakistan.