Construction, one of the largest global economic sectors, has been severely challenged by the economic uncertainties brought on by COVID-19. Since 2020, pandemic-related disruptions and remedial measures have made its historically low performance even more difficult. As a result, recent research mainly addressed these negative consequences on the construction sector. In contrast, this paper aims to identify mitigation strategies recognised as good practices on construction projects in Serbia, in addition to detecting disruptions and quantifying their effects on cost and time overruns. A particular emphasis is given to how the pandemic hastened digital transition and encouraged the adoption of modern project management practices. The research was carried out through a survey of two rounds, conducted one year apart, to obtain an in-depth overview. The findings indicated that, although it had an impact on construction projects, the pandemic was not particularly harmful, because of widely used remedial measures and modern project management techniques. However, the pandemic did not modernise project implementation substantially nor significantly increase the use of cutting-edge digital technologies. Nevertheless, it encouraged project managers to think about introducing new approaches in project management, where digitisation is the new normal. The research findings may indicate to academia and practitioners what strategies may assure a project’s implementation even in enormously changed conditions, such as during a pandemic.

As governments worldwide attempt to develop sustainable waste management strategies, massive amounts of waste have been accumulating. However, developing an effective waste management strategy requires a thorough understanding of waste types and quantites. The existing efforts to identify waste flows in the built environment are unsuitable for countries with non-reliable statistics as they mostly use location-specific parameters such as data on construction, renovation, demolition activity, and generation rates from the literature. The types and quantities of materials embedded are rarely considered. This study aims to fill the identified gap by estimating the quantities of different material types embedded in Serbian residential building stock. It will do so by calculating the volume and weights of building elements and their materials using information from a detailed building stock typology. The results show that the amounts of materials embedded vary significantly from district to district, ranging from 10 in Toplička District to 96.9 million tons in Belgrade. The mineral materials are the highest contributors to the material embedded, implying that future waste management strategies should focus on them. Apart from the formulation of location-specific circular economy and waste management strategies, these results may be useful for planning energy efficiency retrofitting activities, deconstruction and reversible design strategies.