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This study explored the ramifications of COVID-19 on construction operations in Malaysia.

Following a detailed literature review, 37 ramifications are identified and divided into nine aspects. A self-designed survey is then employed to seek the perceptions of construction practitioners around the Klang Valley region regarding the significance of the ramifications. A total of 203 valid responses are subjected to statistical analyses to prioritise the ramifications.

All the potential ramifications are perceived to be significant, with the five utmost critical ramifications being rescheduling the project timeline, compliance with government SOP, delay in the handover project, compulsory COVID-19 test for all workers and the extra cost incurred to provide COVID-19 test for workers.

This study highlights the ramifications of COVID-19 on construction operations and deliberately informs construction organizations regarding the shortcomings of recent construction management. Besides, the insights suggested that industry practitioners devise corresponding strategies for project sustainability in future similar crises.

The findings serve as a valuable reference and are benign to industry professionals and researchers from developing nations, especially nations that share similar characteristics to Malaysia.

This study aims to investigate technology-based health and safety (H&S) management to control the spread of disease on construction sites using a partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) approach.

An extensive literature review is conducted to develop a conceptual framework. The variables identified from the literature review are included in a cross-sectional survey which gathered a total of 203 valid feedback. The variables for challenges are grouped under their relevant construct using exploratory factor analysis. Then, a hypothesized model is developed for PLS-SEM analysis using Smart PLS software. Later, the outcome of the model is further validated by nine construction experts using a semi-structured questionnaire survey.

The results rationalized the relationships between the COVID-19 H&S measures, challenges in implementing COVID-19 H&S measures on construction sites and the innovative technologies in transforming construction H&S management during the COVID-19 pandemic. The possible challenges that obstruct the implementation of H&S measures are highlighted. The potential technologies which can significantly transform H&S management by reducing the impact of challenges are presented.

The findings benefited the industry practitioners who are suffering disruption in construction operations due to the pneumonic plague.

By developing a conceptual model, this study reveals the contribution of technology-based H&S management for construction projects during the COVID-19 pandemic, which remains under-studied, especially in the context of the developing world.

In 1969, the annual per capita income of Singapore was $650. By 1981, Singapore's gross national product per capita was $5,240. Such productivity placed this small developing state among the very wealthiest non‐OPEC developing countries of the world, with an unequalled 1960–82 average annual growth rate of 7.4 per cent. During the decade to 1982, real per capita GNP grew by an average of 9.2 per cent each year. In 1982, gross domestic product amounted to $14 billion. In 1983, Singaporean real GNP grew by 7.2 per cent, a performance matched only by Hong Kong and Taiwan. Unemployment was held to a level of 2.3 per cent and inflation to an even more modest 1.1 per cent. Singapore also achieved the highest national savings rate in the world, at 42 per cent of GDP. These trends produced a 1985 GNP per capita of $7,420, larger than those of Italy, Ireland, Spain, Greece, Portugal and New Zealand; and not much less than those of either Belgium or Britain (World Bank, 1987, p. 203). If the nation's GDP contracted by 1.9 per cent in 1985, it resumed expansion thereafter, at an inflation‐adjusted rate of 1.8 per cent in 1986, and 8.6 per cent in 1987 (Wall Street Journal, 1988, p. 12).

The paper aims to explore the road to independence of the less-fortunate women in early Hong Kong society and their means in passing of wealth after death. In the 1970s, about 400 Chinese wills from the 1840s to the 1940s were dug up on a construction site in Hong Kong. One-fourth of these were from women who had held a substantial amount of property. How they obtained this property intrigued us because, at that time, women were seen as subordinate to men and excluded from the labor market. Why they had wills led to further questions about Hong Kong society of that time and the role of women in it.

The analysis of this paper is based on archival data gathered from the Hong Kong Public Records Office. These data include 98 women’s wills filed from the 1840s to the 1940s and a 500-page government investigation report on the prostitution industry released in 1879. The former recorded valuable information of brief testators’ family and personal life history, amount of assets, and profolio of investment, etc. The latter included testimonials of brothel keepers and prostitutes and their life stories and the background of legalizing prostitution in early Hong Kong. Apart from basic quantitative analysis on women’s marital status, number of properties, nature of wills and number of brothels, qualitative analysis is directed to review the testator’s life of self-reliance, wealth accumulation and reasons of using wills for arranging wealth transmission after death.

In this paper, the authors found that because the colonial government declared prostitution legal, and only women could obtain employment by becoming prostitutes or brothel keepers, they earned their own livelihood, saved money and finally became independent. However, because these professions were not seen as “decent”, and these women were excluded from the formal marriage system, intestacy could cause problems for them. Through their socio-business connections, they became familiar with the Western concept of testate inheritance. So, they tended to use wills – a legal document by which a person assigns someone to distribute his or her property according to his or her wishes after his or her death – to assign their property.

Because only archival data are chosen for analysis, the research results may lack generalizability. Follow-up researches to examine whether the studied women acquired their wealth through their own work or simply as gifts from others are required.

This paper explores the understudied women’s life and method of estate passing after death in the early Hong Kong society. It fills the academic gap of women’s contribution to Hong Kong’s success and enriches our understanding on the important factors that could attribute women’s real independence.

The purpose of this paper is to formulate frameworks for the drivers and barriers of integrated sustainable solid waste management (ISSWM) with reference to conditions prevailing in India.

A multi-phased approach was adopted in this paper to come up with the conceptual framework of the drivers and barriers of ISSWM. In the first phase, drivers and barriers of ISSWM were identified based on a systematic literature review process. In the second phase, 25 experts having 15 plus years of experience in the field of sustainable development and environmental management were consulted to get their opinion. Validation and understanding of the interrelationship among the selected drivers and barriers were done based on the insights from expert interviews. And in the final phase, structural self-interaction matrix and transitive links are defined based on the expert opinion to come up with the theoretical frameworks of drivers and barriers of ISSWM.

Findings reveal the importance to have a system view point approach by giving equal importance to social, environmental and economic pillars of sustainability along with the technology component to effectively and sustainably manage the solid waste disposal. Institutional effectiveness and the robust policy and frameworks are the two variables found to have the highest driving power. Poor social values and ethics, huge population and illiteracy are the three most critical barriers faced by developing nations in achieving the sustainability practices in the solid waste management. The proposed frameworks of drivers and barriers of ISSWM will definitely help policy makers to effectively manage the sustainable waste management practices for developing economies by focusing on the key variables listed out.

One of the limitations is in the use of very limited sample size in the study. Another limitation is that total interpretive structural modeling fails to come up with the relative weightings of drivers and barriers used in the study. These limitations can be overcome by extending the research by using a semi-structured questionnaire survey with higher sample size for the empirical validation of the model.

This research will help to clearly understand the framework of drivers and barriers of variables and their hierarchical level based on the driving power and dependence. Since such articles focusing on the conceptual frameworks of drivers and barriers of ISSWM are found to be very scant, this paper will equally help academicians and waste management professionals to understand the concepts deeply, by getting answers to the fundamental questions of “what,” “why” and “how.” Developed framework of drivers explicitly shows the need to attain financial stability through the commercialization of the waste management initiatives, which will help to reduce burden on various governmental institutions. Commercialization opportunities will also help to have more successful start-up ventures in solid waste management domain that can provide improved employment opportunities and hygiene environment in the developing nations like India.

Based on the authors’ best knowledge, there is hardly any article that explicitly explains the conceptual frameworks of the drivers and barriers of ISSWM by considering the conditions prevailing in developing countries like India. And thus, this can be considered as one of the unique research attempts to build a clear conceptual framework of ISSWM. The study contributes significantly to the existing literature body by clearly interpreting the interrelationships and the driving power and dependence of variables of ISSWM.