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Construction organizations are challenged with effective management of their human resource (HR) as both are integral to each other. But the state of practice in the developing countries is not encouraging and construction professionals found themselves less motivated and enthusiastic about their job. This pushes to study the motivational needs of construction professionals of different career levels. Therefore, the current study benchmarks the HR practices of the construction industry of Pakistan to measure if there is any difference between what professionals truly value and what they get. In doing so, data was collected from 250 professionals through a questionnaire survey. Results reveal that most of the motivational needs are not gratified and the only stakeholder doing better are clients who’s mid- and end-career professionals feel somewhat satisfied. Practical suggestions are provided to help the construction industry upgrade its HR vision and facilitate its most precious resource.

Construction industry started to incorporate the idea of energy efficiency in infrastructure and design a few decades ago. This review paper specifically deals with one of such energy efficient masonry technique called Rat-trap bond. For this purpose, body of knowledge is explored high and low and only those articles are selected that deal particularly with Rat-trap bond. The thorough study of this selected literature shows that the bond is not only energy proficient but also cost saving. With the ability to reduce cooling and thermal load, the bond is structurally stable as well. The compressive strength test of rat-trap bond with C.M. 1:5 is 49% (0.87 MPa) stronger than C.M 1:4 (1.30 MPa) with and without roof slab respectively. The review is an attempt to suggest future recommendations by finding the research gap in this field of knowledge. It has been found that although the bond has a promising ability to be practically adopted yet it has not enjoyed the eminence it deserves. Only a limited number of case studies are present for realization of this technique. It is recommended that this masonry technique, owing to its less construction cost and excellent energy efficiency, can be primarily utilized by low income groups and in residential constructions.

Management and behavioural practices of an organization highlight the importance of human resource management (HRM) to its performance. The objective of this review is to identify the HRM practices of construction industry acknowledged by researchers from the year 2007 to 2019. Databases related to human resource (HR) in the construction industry were referred, where 125 papers were selected, out of which 79 papers were found relevant. The decade has been observed having a proper flow of the research and the sequence of which undergoes as it starts from leadership styles and attitudes then considers the employee-related dimensions. Onwards the research steered its direction towards linking the practices that are mutually beneficial for organizations and employees. Towards the end of the decade, the competitive success factors and organizational norms and practices were engrossed. With this knowledge, a framework has been introduced showing how different HRM practices associate with each other.