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The application of gamification to encourage energy conservation behaviour in house occupants is an emerging field of research. However, empirical evidence of its effectiveness is lacking. This paper presents lessons learnt from the EU-funded EnerGAware research project, in which an innovative serious game (a game designed for purposes other than purely entertainment) was developed to promote reduced energy consumption and carbon emissions by changing social housing tenants’ energy efficiency behaviour. The game was validated in a sample of European social housing using a longitudinal, two-stage experimental design, employing both pre-post and control group approaches. While some aspects of the game did not work as intended, there were nevertheless some positive impacts. The intervention increased social housing tenants’ awareness and engagement in certain energy saving behaviour and provided an average electricity saving of 3.46% and an average gas saving of 7.48%. Although savings were found not to be statistically significant, an effect size was detected (0.2). Therefore, future steps should exploit all available opportunities to replicate the pilot and increase the sample size so as to gain stronger evidence of the game's impact. Preliminary results support the utility of gaming investment in the household energy efficiency field, and provide useful insights and pathways that could be incorporated into the development of future serious game interventions to foster their effectiveness.

Success has always been the ultimate goal of construction projects, and different researchers have tried to evaluate it using different factors. Although specialized industrial construction usually involves very large scale projects with a high degree of technological complexity, research has mostly focused on civil and residential success factors. Experiences in Industrial Plants projects can help to improve project management and productivity in such a specialized sector. In this kind of projects, the contractual arrangement is one of the core differences on Project management and thus project success. This research seeks to develop a schema for classifying critical success factors as well as a methodology for evaluating projects. This methodology was adopted to evaluate critical success factors in Industrial Plants projects with different contractual arrangements. Findings suggest that although the construction stage has been the focus of many studies, the first stages are decisive for the success of projects; contract construction projects consider project planning to be more important; lump sum contract construction projects give greater importance to monitoring the benefits; bidding competition projects consider the available technology with greater rigor, etc. The results indicate that different Industrial Plants projects involve different success factors and management characteristics to achieve project objectives. En cualquier proyecto de construcción el principal objetivo es que sea exitoso y por lo tanto a lo largo del tiempo diferentes investigadores han tratado de evaluar los factores que influyen en el éxito de proyectos. En el ámbito de la construcción estas investigaciones se han enfocado principalmente a obras civiles y residenciales. Este artículo muestra resultados que provienen de proyectos de construcción industrial especializada que incluyen proyectos de gran escala con un alto grado de complejidad tecnológica, relaciones contractuales más complejas que en las obras residenciales, mayor dificultad en la gestión de proyectos, etc. Las experiencias exitosas en proyectos de Plantas Industriales pueden ayudar a mejorar la gestión de proyectos y la productividad en un sector tan especializado como es la construcción industrial. En esta investigación se desarrolla un esquema de clasificación de factores críticos para el éxito así como una metodología para evaluar proyectos. Esta metodología fue adoptada para evaluar factores críticos para el éxito en distintos proyectos de Plantas Industriales con diferentes relaciones contractuales. Las conclusiones sugieren que aunque la etapa de construcción haya sido el foco de muchos estudios, las primeras etapas son decisivas para el éxito de proyectos; los proyectos con un sistema de contratación tradicional consideran la planificación del proyecto como lo más importante; los proyectos "llave en mano" dan una importancia mayor al monitoreo de los beneficios; los proyectos que se llevan a concurso consideran la tecnología disponible con mayor rigor, etc. Los resultados indican que distintos proyectos de Plantas Industriales requieren de diferentes factores de éxito y características de gerencia para alcanzar sus objetivos.