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The purpose of this paper is to explore contemporary attitudes amongst UK construction professionals regards fire safety post the Grenfell Tower disaster. Specifically, the research examines practitioner’s perceptions of fire safety design, material specification, construction and maintenance of high-rise blocks throughout a building’s whole life cycle.

A multi-methodology approach was adopted that utilises a mix of research methods. Extant literature and media content is used as a secondary data source, providing a more insightful interpretivist analysis – the results of which guided the development of the survey’s main question set. Primary survey data are sourced from structured interviews and questionnaires completed by participating industry professionals and built environment undergraduate students using non-representative sampling methods. In addition, a Grenfell Tower special advisory panel member was interviewed to add further validity to the overall findings.

The quantitative findings present evidence to suggest that the Grenfell disaster (and media storm that has surrounded this event) has raised the general level of fire safety knowledge and competency amongst construction professionals. However, qualitative feedback from the special advisory panel member suggests specific fire prevention knowledge remains elusive within both industry and taught programmes at Higher Education Institutes. As a consequence, changes in the taught curriculum are proposed together with an extension of the role of facilities managers in practice to cover fire safety in greater depth.

This paper provides thoughtful insights into the contemporary discourse on fire safety within the UK construction industry. The research also provides critical suggestions to both industry and policy makers which seek to prevent a repeat tragedy occurring again.

This study aims to investigate the behaviour of building users and how this impacts upon building energy performance. Specifically, the work examines the behavioural traits of able-bodied users of a large higher education building who erroneously access and egress the building using doorways intended for disabled users.

An inductive methodological approach is adopted that uses grounded theory to devise new insights into building users’ access and egress habits. Structured interviews are conducted to collect primary data from 68 building users of a large educational building over a four-week period. Responses to questions posed provide the basis for a tabularisation of behavioural traits.

Reasons for able-bodied building users’ preferences to using disabled access are identified and discussed; these are thematically grouped under the headings of apathy, convenience, emergency, ergonomics, ignorance and phobia. Building upon these findings, the research then offers insights into the approaches that could be adopted to change the erroneous behaviours. These approaches include education of building users on the impact their behaviour has upon building performance and environmental pollution, more stringent regulation to penalise repeat offenders and changes to building entrance design using obtrusive (i.e. radio frequency identification tags) and unobstrusive control measures (i.e. a second entrance doorway or slower opening mechanism).

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to investigate the rationale for able-bodied building users erroneously using disabled persons’ access and egress doorways within a building, which as a consequence, inadvertently reduces the building’s environmental performance.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse extant literature on POE of a building’s operations and performance as a means of holistically mapping the existing body of knowledge (BOK); identify impediments preventing its wide-scale adoption throughout practice; and develop new theory that seeks to integrate digital technologies (such as building information modelling (BIM)) within facilities management (FM) via a POE feedback mechanism.

An inductive and interpretivist methodological approach is adopted that utilises a mixed methods systematic review to map bibliometric data on the POE, associated underpinning processes and benchmarking facilities. Publication and citation metrics are produced via the software VOSviewer to determine the extent to which POE interrelates with other fields of study (namely, digital technologies and FM).

The BOK accrued illustrates that whilst POE has received comparatively scant academic attention in comparison to other fields of study, interest in the area is growing. The work also identifies that a stronger community of practice (CoP) is needed (that comprises of academics and practitioners) to ensure that a consistent approach to POE implementation is developed and that the barriers to POE implementation are addressed.

Findings presented accentuate the need for design practitioners to reverse engineer POE implementation to inform future design vis-à-vis simply reporting upon an existing building’s performance post construction. Other new theories are also introduced as a means of engendering wider academic discourse in this field of science.

In the UK, the Future Homes Standard (FHS) will be used to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 75–80% in newly constructed houses as part of the effort to achieve net zero by 2050. This chapter explains what this means in practice through design and building of houses by a housing association and speculative housebuilder. Research carried out by the Centre for Future Homes at Birmingham City University (BCU) has enabled a deeper understanding to emerge in how technology and collaborative approaches to production by all participants engaged in the supply chain can ensure attainment of carbon emissions. Crucially, the research has incorporated analysis of the experiences of occupants of innovative houses in altering behaviour and interaction with technology including heat pumps and ventilation systems. Findings from the research will be widely disseminated to assist others in appreciating the potential for housing, built with traditional locally available labour materials to be part of the effort to arrest climate change through proactive carbon reduction.

Climate change caused by an increase in greenhouse gas emissions poses a threat to species on earth. Such emissions have been caused by activities that have increased the rate at which greenhouse emissions have occurred due to the burning of fossil fuels and industrial processes in recent decades. Without urgent intervention, the ability of earth’s citizens will be irrevocably altered. Hundreds of millions of people’s lives will effectively become extremely challenging. Deaths due to starvation, lack of water, storms and flooding will increase. The magnitude of the crisis confronting humanity has resulted in means the formation of what’s known as the ‘Net Zero’ target set by The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2024), a United Nations body consisting of global experts on climate change in 1994. This chapter explains why climate change has occurred, what its impact may be and how intervention by governments as well as all organisations and individuals catastrophe can be avoided. There is an overview of subsequent chapters contained in this book.

This paper aims to identify, analyze and discuss a potential new business opportunity that arises from the intersection of the digital music and game industries across borders throughout network-based innovation approach.

The research draws on review of industry and academic literature, two online surveys and interviews, overall encompassed by a interpretative exploratory research methodology strategy.

The study supports the interest and potential for developing new products that combine digital music and casual digital games and that draw on firms from more than one region, while potentially involving a wide set of social network key stakeholders.

This is an exploratory study in which findings should be challenged by confirmatory studies, including new product design and development of modeling techniques and network-based innovation approaches. This research contributes for the generation of new insights over technological and social driving forces, as well as emerging trends that shed light on the global competitiveness and on convergence of mobile gaming and digital music industries at regional innovation systems view. It also discusses spillover mechanisms based on new knowledge creation, knowledge diffusion and knowledge appropriation throughout the key stakeholders. The customer-centric innovation and network value autocorrelation hypothesis was validated, and both technology convergence and social factors are enhancement factors for innovation. Limitations and further research with larger sampling, specialization techniques and empirical modeling to in-depth analysis is suggested.

The study provides a framework for managers to develop new products that merges boundaries of related industries and encourages network-based innovation and cooperation between industry players, involving different regions. Ultimately, it shows opportunities of diversification, by introducing new products into new markets, as result of interdependence, soft factors, knowledge spillover and absorptive capacity mechanisms over a network of key stakeholders across different regions throughout customer-centric innovation, while impacting also new discussion on entrepreneurship and knowledge spillover theory and policy making.

Social capital network is key for innovation and knowledge spillover among industry players. Content creation regarding products and services show high dependence on spatial external cultural influences, tastes and habits for customer-centric innovation, while impacting on social and learning customer experience, as well.

The paper has value for product development and innovation managers, researchers and practitioners. It discusses the value of innovation systems that are purposively developed beyond traditional geographic and industry boundaries.