COVID-19 is the most critical health and safety risk facing the global construction sector. The COVID-19 crisis leads to reduction in site productivity, has increased compliance costs, delayed projects and increases construction workers' exposure to risk and infections. However, as countries begin to ease lockdowns and restrictions, there is a need to examine the measures that the construction companies can take to ensure workers are “Covid-safe”. This research developed a questionnaire instrument that included 24 Covid-preventive measures on construction sites. Isolating sick workers, conducting daily checks for COVID-19 symptoms, preventing hugging/handshaking at the site, displaying health advisory posters and info-graphics, and providing face masks to workers are seen to be the main measures towards keeping sites “Covid-safe”. The Principal Component Analysis structured the 24 measures into 4 components. The 4 components explained about 73% of the model, namely hygiene and control, equipment and monitoring, awareness, and incentives. The results found that compliance costs of health and safety regulations to prevent COVID-19 will increase by more than 20%, site productivity will be reduced by up to 50%, and the pandemic will have caused a 40% increase in skills shortage. Cluster analysis was performed to cluster the sites in terms of their exposure to COVID-19 risk. In order to examine the practicability of the findings, the model was validated with 4 case studies. It is asserted that the research findings’ have potential to keep sites “Covid-safe” which help construction companies increase productivity, reduce project costs, reduce claims and deliver projects on schedule. This research is the first to examine measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 on construction sites and the findings hold critical theoretical and practical implications for future research on health and safety management.

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Wellness of the patients correlated with the hospital building performance. For building to achieve it design objectives and provide value added services to owners, users and other stakeholders, maintenance functions are strategic. As a result, management of the maintenance of hospital buildings is a delicate and expensive task to perform. Despite the fact that there is a lack of representative data on the maintenance of hospital buildings in Malaysia, there is a growing concern surrounding the subject. Fire outbreaks and decay in hospital buildings suggest a need to conduct critical research to investigate the maintenance management practices of hospital buildings. This paper reports part of an ongoing research that aims to develop a maintenance model for hospital buildings. Hence, this current research reports the results of literature reviews and observations on hospital buildings in Malaysia and their maintenance practices. Upon reviewing the literature, a conceptual framework of maintenance model for hospital buildings was proposed. The research found that the current approaches to maintenance management in the hospital buildings were corrective, fragmented, cost-driven and expensive. The procurement of maintenance services was mainly outsourcings. All these call into question, the decision making processes of the hospital maintenance organisations. Collectively, the above considerations have led to the formulation of the main research question- what are the critical success factors [CSFs] for the maintenance of hospital buildings? The current study also discussed a proposed research methodology for the main research. Furthermore, issues pertaining to the research design, ontology and epistemology were briefly discussed. It was established that to enrich the findings of the main research, it was imperative to collect primary data using both quantitative and qualitative research paradigms.

The present research aims to investigate the insights of housing providers on potential benefits of sustainable affordable housing. Housing providers need certainty on the benefits of sustainable affordable housing for homebuyers. We used a cross‐sectional survey questionnaire consisting of 23 benefits of sustainable affordable housing administered to 121 experts from the housing industry. In total, 82% of the housing professional respondents believed that sustainable affordable housing offered all 23 benefits included in the survey. The first five main benefits were an increase in the comfort of homeowners, the enjoyment of natural ventilation, a reduction in water bills, a reduction in electricity bills and an increase in housing values. An exploratory factor analysis returned 5 components: environmental, energy, social, cost and status. The findings provide insight into the drivers of sustainable affordable housing. A framework for the benefits of sustainable affordable housing was developed. The results will be useful for policy‐makers, developers, place managers, housing associations and academics attempting to increase the supply and demand of sustainable affordable housing.