Dear Colleagues,

The construction sector has frequently been criticized over the years for being highly litigious, fragmented, inefficient, and characterized by low productivity. Periodically, government reports cite these charges as being axiomatically true. A brief examination of the UK example will see such a history starting with the Simon Report of 1944 through to the Construction Playbook of 2020, via Emerson (1962), Banwell (1964), Latham (1994), and Egan (1998), amongst others. Through the years, one feature of construction has stayed the same. The industry is hallmarked by the need to manage flows of high volumes of relatively low value materials to the sites of construction. By default, there is a huge cost associated with the transportation of materials; hence the need for logistics management in the construction sector. Excessive vehicle movements present significant resource requirements and consequential impacts on multi-factor productivity. Yet relatively speaking, the construction sector has not been at the vanguard of logistics management planning, tools, and technologies development. Much more work has been directed towards high level supply chain practice rather than the operational needs of transport and its planning to positively drive productivity. This would seem to be somewhat perverse.

The purpose of this Special Issue in the journal Logistics is to examine the current “state of the art” for construction logistics operations globally. Contributions are invited from technology-focused researchers developing new technical solutions and techniques to help deliver construction logistics solutions. Similarly, construction management researchers are invited to provide insights into the processes and procurement management aspects of construction logistics optimization. Of particular interest will be those researchers that can provide up to date case study-based innovations and exemplars from their investigations.

The intention ultimately is to provide a benchmark of the current state of knowledge of logistics in construction and therefore a basis from which future researchers can develop their work.

Prof. John E. Tookey
Dr. Fei Ying
Guest Editors

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• construction logistics
• supply chain management
• transportation planning
• procurement
• productivity
• best practice