The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the whole world, including India, especially in the construction sector. The study aims to identify, compare, and analyze the critical pandemic impacts (CPI) on construction projects in India. To achieve this, 40 interviews with industry professionals, are followed by a systematic review to identify the CPI. The data collected was used to develop a survey, sent to industry professionals all over India, with a return of 92 valid responses. The data were analyzed using reliability analysis, mean score ranking, overlap analysis, agreement analysis, and correlation analysis. The overall critical pandemic impact includes ‘labor scarcity,’ ‘supply chain disruption,’ ‘decreased construction productivity,’ ‘increased project financing rejection rate,’ and ‘reduced foreign investment in the construction industry.’ The findings could aid authorities and policymakers in taking suitable actions toward solving the current CPI in India. Project managers and owners could consider the current CPI in order to formulate better plans. Overcoming CPI could lead to an economic leap in India.

Purpose Sustainable water management has been a trending goal in the past decade. Non-revenue water (NRW) is one form of water loss that should be addressed to reach water sustainability. While rehabilitating water distribution networks (WDNs) is one way to decrease NRW, the process is often delayed owing to cost. Therefore, it is essential to provide decision-makers with cost-effective approaches to optimize WDN rehabilitation. This study aims to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of approaches for rehabilitating WDN from developing countries’ perspectives. Design/methodology/approach A systematic literature review was first conducted to identify different WDN rehabilitation methods and techniques to develop the questionnaire survey. This is followed by collecting questionnaire survey data in Malaysia and Egypt on the cost and effectiveness of the WDN rehabilitation methods and techniques. A total of 176 respondents were collected, 109 from Malaysia and 67 from Egypt. Then, the data were analyzed using mean score ranking with normalization technique and agreement analysis. Findings The results from the data analysis show that the cost-effective approaches are “programming,” “simulation,” “digital twin” and “supervisory control and data acquisition.” Additionally, the data from Malaysia suggest two additional cost-effective approaches: “zoning network” and “genetic algorithm.” Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper presents one of the first studies that laterally compares the cost-effectiveness of existing and potential WDN rehabilitation approaches between different countries. There is yet a study that compared these WDN rehabilitation approaches. This comparison which is developed depending on the systematic review could be a reference for future studies or surveys which could be done on different countries in the future. The main findings of this paper can be a useful reference for decision-makers, especially those from middle-income countries, when looking into approaches for WDN rehabilitation. A better WDN rehabilitation supports NRW reduction, moving towards sustainable water management.

PurposeSustainability involves ensuring that sufficient resources are available for current and future generations. Non-revenue water (NRW) creates a barrier to sustainability through energy and water loss. However, a comprehensive overview of NRW reduction strategies is lacking. This study reviews the existing literature to identify available strategies for reducing NRW and its components and discusses their merits.Design/methodology/approachA systematic literature review was conducted to identify and analyze different strategies for reducing NRW. The initial search identified 158 articles, with 41 of these deemed suitably relevant following further examination. Finally, 14 NRW reduction strategies were identified from the selected articles.FindingsThe identified NRW reduction strategies were grouped into strategies for reducing (1) apparent losses (AL), (2) real losses (RL) and (3) water losses, with the latter involving the combination of AL and RL. The strategies adopted most frequently are “prevent water leakage” and “control water pressure.” In addition, water distribution network (WDN) rehabilitation has additional benefits over other RL reduction strategies, including saving water and energy, increasing hydraulic performance and enhancing reliability. Finally, utilizing decision support systems is the only strategy capable of reducing multiple NRW categories.Originality/valueThis review provides insights into the overall NRW problem and the strategies best equipped to address it. Authorities can use these findings to develop case-specific NRW reduction action plans that save water and energy, while providing other economic benefits. In addition, NRW reduction can improve WDN reliability.

Implementing building information modeling (BIM) in construction projects can provide team members with an effective collaboration process. Therefore, organizations are implementing BIM to acquire the benefits. However, project members still use traditional collaborative approaches due to the lack of trust. Therefore, this study aims to identify the factors, challenges, and strategies of trust in BIM-based construction projects. To achieve this aim, semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty industry professionals, and thematic analysis was used to analyze the collected data. The results suggest that the factors affecting trust in BIM-based construction projects are knowledge, skills, awareness, behavior, policy, system, cost, and management. Moreover, the challenges to creating trust in BIM-based construction projects are policy, cost, cooperation, system, service, behavior, expertise, and knowledge. Finally, the strategies used to create trust in BIM-based construction projects are management, preparation, capability, cooperation, awareness, individuals, education, and government. In summary, this study provides insights that can help industry practitioners to improve construction projects by reducing unnecessary distrust among team members.

Purpose Implementing building information modeling (BIM) in construction projects offers many benefits. However, the use of BIM in project cost management is still limited. This study aims to review the current trends in the application of BIM in project cost management. Design/methodology/approach This study systematically reviews the literature on the application of BIM in project cost management. A total of 46 related articles were identified and analyzed using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses method. Findings Eighteen approaches to applying BIM in project cost management were identified. The approaches can be grouped into cost control and cost estimation. Also, BIM can be applied independently or integrated with other techniques. The integrated approaches for cost control include integration with genetic algorithms, Monte Carlo simulation, lean construction, integrated project delivery, neural network and value engineering. On the contrary, integrated approaches for cost estimation include integration with cost-plus pricing, discrepancy analysis, construction progress curves, estimation standards, algorithms, declarative mappings, life cycle sustainability assessment, ontology, Web-based frameworks and structured query language. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to systematically review prior literature on the application of BIM in project cost management. As a result, the study provides a comprehensive understanding of the current state of the art and fills the literature gap. Researchers and industry professionals can use the study findings to increase the benefits of implementing BIM in construction projects.

Water sustainability ensures clean and plentiful water for both current and future generations. Water is the core of sustainable development as it is critical for socio-economic development, healthy ecosystems, and for human survival itself. It helps companies address supply and demand issues by using water more efficiently as well as reducing the amount of water needed to manufacture their products. Maintaining water sustainability is difficult because of a high level of non-revenue water (NRW) or water losses in water distribution networks (WDN). While one of the significant causes of NRW in Malaysia is difficulties in rehabilitating WDN, studies on effective approaches for rehabilitating WDN is limited. So, it is essential to understand the optimization techniques for rehabilitating WDN. Hence, this study’s objective is to identify the different optimization techniques for rehabilitating WDN by systematically reviewing the existing literature on WDN rehabilitation. This research contributes to the body of knowledge in providing insights on optimization techniques for WDN rehabilitation, which could help researchers and industry practitioners reduce NRW and achieve water sustainability.

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