Lock-ins are typically seen as barriers to sustainability transitions, particularly in the energy sector, where they can impede the radical changes needed for decarbonization. This study, however, argues that lock-ins can also act as catalysts for innovation within grid operators’ operational practices. Focusing on a Distribution System Operator (DSO) in Central-North Netherlands, the research explores how material, behavioural, and institutional lock-ins influence grid capacity planning for energy transition. Using a qualitative system dynamics methodology, the study reveals how these lock-ins contribute to grid congestion and delayed infrastructure development, but they also create pressure for adaptive change through three key mechanisms: (i) reframing questions, (ii) reorienting synergies between actors, and (iii) rediscovering solutions. These efforts have shifted the organization’s focus from reliability to flexibility, restructured internal operations to manage congestion, and enhanced collaboration with customers, regional authorities, and other energy system actors. However, challenges remain, including the need for a more innovation-driven organizational culture, stronger cooperation between regional and national grid operators, and greater public engagement in congestion management. By framing these findings within the tactical level of sustainability transition management—where strategy meets operations—this study demonstrates how electricity infrastructure can respond to lock-in conditions through adaptive strategies that turn systemic constraints into drivers for innovation, fostering more sustainable and resilient energy systems.

At TU Delft, we are not just educating engineers; we are shaping the future of engineering and engineering education. We are empowering our students to become the kind of leaders who can navigate complexity, embrace change, and build a better world, also under VUCA conditions. In this manifesto, we develop a line of reasoning to rethink our education, moving away from ‘professional problem solvers’ to ‘individuals who care for our collective future from an engineering background.’
We believe that TU Delft has a unique opportunity to lead the way in reimagining engineering education for the VUCA world. By embracing the principles outlined in this manifesto, we can empower our students to become the future-proof engineers that our society needs. We invite all members of the TU Delft community – faculty, students, and staff – to join us on this exciting journey.

The transition to a circular economy in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry requires coordinated supply chain transitions. Digital tools, such as data-sharing platforms and BIM-based circular design tools, offer potential but remain underutilized, particularly among material suppliers. To bridge this adoption gap, we developed a serious game that connects digital solution developers with AEC professionals, fostering collaboration in circular construction. Tested in a national Growth Fund project, the game simulates real-world challenges, emphasizing needs for data sharing and intermediation. Future integration into lifelong learning programs will equip professionals with the skills to drive circular innovations.

Wicked challenges such as energy and material shortage have prompted educators in AECO disciplines to adopt CBL methods. This paper explores the potential and limitations of using BIM as an education platform to address these challenges within an inter-disciplinary setting. Through two cases at TU Delft, one re-design of a routine building information management course and a new demo-course with joint-interdisciplinary groups, the research evaluates BIM's role in preparing students for real-world energy and circular transitions. Findings highlight BIM's capacity to bridge academic learning and professional practice, while also identifying areas for improvement in its pedagogies.

The construction sector is increasingly recognized as a critical domain in the pursuit of a circular economy (CE) (Adams et al. 2017). In the Netherlands, the landfilling of construction and demolition waste (CDW) is already minimized, underlining the transition outcome to CE, but most of the CDW is currently only processed low level recycling or backfilling (Azcárate- Aguerre 2023). Among the various strategies to circularity, reuse of construction products has shown particular promise, where materials and components are recovered, refurbished if necessary, and reintroduced into new or ongoing building projects(Tsui 2023; Van Uden et al. 2025). Yet, despite its potential, this approach faces a series of practical challenges that impede mainstream adoption: fragmented stakeholder networks, inconsistent or incomplete data about available used materials, and a general lack of robust, integrative logistics mechanisms (Tjahjono 2010). […]

Understanding the current status and historical path dependencies of infrastructures is crucial for planning future interventions in sustainability transitions. However, studies that examine the interplay between sustainability transitions and civil infrastructures remain limited. This paper presents a systematic review of 97 empirical studies that analyze how infrastructure systems and sustainability transitions influence one another. Infrastructure is found to play a dual role—as both a structuring force that enables or constrains transitions, and as a domain reshaped by transition processes. The review identifies key knowledge gaps and transdisciplinary opportunities. Firstly, capacity-related challenges—across technical, managerial, institutional, and policy dimensions—emerge as a shared concern and a promising entry point for deeper integration of infrastructure- and transition-oriented perspectives. Notably, the tactical level, where strategic ambitions are translated into infrastructure practices, remains significantly underexplored across the literature. Finally, most studies focus on individual systems, overlooking interdependencies across infrastructures and transitions, highlighting the need for a more networked, cross-sectoral approach.

Cross-domain coordination and nexus thinking are increasingly recognized as vital for addressing complex sustainability challenges in infrastructure systems. Transitions in one infrastructure system often reshape others through socio-technical interactions, revealing critical interdependencies. However, research on these interdependencies during transitions frequently focuses on technological innovation within specific regimes (e.g., renewables in energy) and lacks insights into how strategic ambitions are translated into operational realities. In this study, two different infrastructure regimes, as electricity and drinking water, will be investigated which will explore how the energy and water transitions influence each other by focusing on two Dutch public utility providers to identify cross-learning opportunities. Using the theoretical lens of socio-technical interdependencies and multi-regime interactions, the research investigates the mechanisms behind implementing electrification for renewables and sustainable water management strategies, as well as the common and unique challenges these systems face in achieving their transition goals. Drawing on 23 semi-structured interviews and secondary data, the study employs qualitative system dynamics models to highlight key interdependencies and challenges. The research identifies four critical interaction moments: (1) competition for limited space and resources, (2) symbiosis in aging infrastructure renovation, (3) integration through shared funding and political support, and (4) spill-over effects from grid congestion and social prioritization. By uncovering lock-in mechanisms, interdependencies, and cross-sectoral interactions, the study provides insights into fostering collaboration within infrastructure systems undergoing transitions.

Digital transformation in projects disrupts how project-oriented organizations recognize and value skills and expertise of new data-savvy talents. Existing research on digitalization in projects has focused mainly on technologies that can help organizations and people achieve, without connecting the implications these technologies have on human and social capital in project environments. This research goes beyond this dominant technocratic view to examine talent management for project management professionals operating in an increasingly digitalized and data-rich world. Through a purposive sample of 24 semistructured interviews with diverse project management experts across industry, academia, and professional institutions, our findings extend talent management scholarship in two ways. First, unlike scholarship on talent management that hitherto has emphasized identification and recruitment of talents, our interviewees placed more attention on developing and retaining talents. Second, whereas talent management scholarship can identify pivotal roles that can secure competitive advantage, our research highlights the importance of data-savvy expertise to interact with nondigital project management expertise in order for such pivotal roles to succeed in project contexts. Strategies are proposed for new directions in talent management practices based on our proposed buy–lease–make model for talent management in project-oriented organizations.

There has been growing interest in the adoption of advanced digital technologies in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) sector, as shown by the increasing number of review studies on the adoption of Digital Twin (DT) in the sector. While previous reviews on DT in the AEC sector have emphasised the technical opportunities and challenges, reviews that take a specific organisational and management focus on the use of DT are lacking. In this systematic review, we close this gap by analysing 102 papers from three main scientific databases (Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science), which emphasise organisational and management aspects of using DT in the AEC sector across the project and asset lifecycle phases. The findings indicate that, whereas there is still a stronger focus on finding optimisations for various performance concerns (e.g. project efficiency, health and safety and maintenance performance), there is increasing awareness and interest in using DT to encourage collaboration and (end-)user participation. Despite this recognition, our review also identified a number of critical knowledge gaps on the use and user perspectives of DT, which includes how powerful computational tools can be developed into user-friendly interfaces to reduce complexity and increase accessibility to all stakeholders in the decision-making process, and how participatory design frameworks can be combined with structured feedback systems and standardised data access protocols in order to stimulate communication, continuous improvement, and data-driven decision making.

Hospital planning and design projects are known for their complexity, partly attributed to the many stakeholders involved. This study aims to understand how a Dutch hospital project, with transformative change goals for its future healthcare delivery, dealt with their stakeholder engagement in the project’s planning and design phase. This study addresses heterogeneity in stakeholder relationships, an underexplored aspect within stakeholder engagement literature. A qualitative study was conducted on the stakeholder engagement during 10 years of hospital planning and design. We used an abductive approach by reviewing project documentation and transcripts of interviews with project stakeholders (n = 22) to reconstruct how the project leadership dealt with the challenges of heterogeneity in the project’s specific context. This study explores dynamism and pluralism within the relationships with seven distinctive stakeholder groups from the hospital’s multi-stakeholder setting, uncovering engagement strategies based on unique combinations of actor and process-specific characteristics. Wider transformative change goals added to the challenges faced in ownership and alignment of goals. Findings highlight the strategies and competencies the project’s owner (and leadership) deployed, such as adapting the project organisation’s structure, investing in an in-house community of practice with a dedicated stakeholder engagement role and fostering enduring collegial relations and commitment.

The real estate industry is increasingly challenged to integrate sustainability into its operations, more specifically by the growing importance of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) values. Simultaneously, the advancement of digital functions is reshaping industries worldwide, including the real estate industry, by transforming operational strategies and processes. This convergence places significant pressure on the industry to adopt ESG values while understanding their interconnection with digital functions.
As a result, this research explores the dynamic interplay between ESG values and digital functions, focusing on how their integration can enhance sustainable development in real estate. Employing a multi-stakeholder, chain-oriented approach, the study examines key ESG value constellations and their interconnection with digital functions. Real estate developers, as key actors in initiating, planning, and managing real estate development projects, are positioned as the primary focus group for this research for understanding and addressing this interconnection.
The main objective is to add onto academic literature and develop practicalities and insights that provide real estate developers with actionable insights to navigate the complexities of ESG values and digital functions effectively. By advancing understanding in this area, the study aims to contribute to the future of real estate development characterised by sustainability, transparency, and resilience, aligning with broader global goals for environmental and social responsibility.

Interorganisational collaboration has been a longstanding, central topic of interest to researchers and practitioners in construction management. Early studies have approached collaboration through factors- or indicators-oriented modes of theorising, with more recent studies zooming in on the practices of collaboration. Yet, how collaboration emerges and what effortful accomplishments need to be in place for collaboration to work remain under-explored. In this paper, we investigate how interorganisational collaboration emerges in the context of sustainability transitions, where transitions are characterised by long-term endeavours that go beyond a single project, and which are typically known for high levels of uncertainty and novelty. Through two living laboratories for regenerating the port cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in which we work as engaged scholars in these settings we analysed how, how actors navigate through the paradoxes of identity, challenge specificity, and temporal uncertainties are analysed as they come together to learn to collaborate.

Automatic design tools are being developed to assist designers handle tedious work at scale. However, knowledge gaps still exist in harnessing deep learning models to learn from human experience for more efficient design generation while keeping the data understandable and interoperable. Moreover, human-in-the-loop approach is largely neglected, which are essential for more user-centered design. This research utilizes graph data to parametrically represent housing designs and graph-representative deep generative models for design generation, which provides an interactive design approach for the users at every step. This method would facilitate the human-centered design process by returning feasible and parametric housing design alternatives.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become one of the most dicussed topics of today and are being used to support solving complex problems. AI has given opportunities for efficiency, control, safety while raising issues around trust, optimism and responsibility. One of the prominent features of AI resides in the digitalization of the built environment. Optimizing the built environment to improve quality of life, adapt to climate change and respond to crises requires strategies to redesign, reproduce and manage the traditional ways the built environment has been shaped. In this chapter, we present demonstate how we can use AI for post-pandemic recovery. To do that, we first start with addressing digital transformation and the role of AI. We then discuss how we can accelerate this transformation in cities. We will reflect on the covid-19 crises and the impact of the crises in the built environment. We argue that the use of AI raises new possibilities, questions and problems around how we can better organize the built environment and more inclusive participation while supporting existing logics of the built environment.

Despite the importance of motivation in driving the formation of collaborative risk management, the existing literature lacks recognition of stakeholders’ motivations to participate in the collaborative risk management of mega infrastructure projects. By combining interview data with the theoretical framework based on previous literature, this study constructs a motivation framework for stakeholders to participate in collaborative risk management of mega infrastructure projects, comprising four groups of motivations formed by glue identity logic (organizational or individual level) and interest logic (intrinsic drive or extrinsic stimulus). Motivational differences between project owners and contractors are discussed based on the case study of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, indicating that these differences are closely related to the identity of stakeholders and project progress. This study contributes a systematic perspective to recognize the motivations behind participation in collaborative risk management of mega infrastructure projects, aligns managerial intentions with actual motivations, and uncovers new insights into collaborative risk management. It enriches the collaborative risk management theory in mega infrastructure projects and provides guidance and inspiration for practitioners in decision-making and collaborative risk management in such projects.

The recent research focus on circular construction supply chains challenges the integration of supply chain processes. There is a need to build simulation tools for construction, facility management, deconstruction and reuse of building components. This paper introduces a model-based tool to enhance supply chain process integration developed with Business Process Mapping and Notation (BPMN). The model captures the remanufacturing supply chain for façade products that are demounted and reapplied in a different construction project. The paper highlights the tool’s potential for predictive analysis and decision support based on supply chain performances. The demonstration shows an innovative approach to CE-driven supply chains.

In an age where research productivity has become a valued measure, it is encouraging to read a book that calls for researchers to slow down and embrace ethnography in order to dwell in the throes of everyday life. As the editors rightly point out, ethnographic research enables us to search deeper, ask unexplored or under-explored questions and reveal the 'hidden gems' that allow us to better understand what really goes on in the practices of constructing the built environment. Over 20 years ago, as I was embarking on my own journey as a PhD student, I was indeed drawn to the power of ethnographic research. An early inspiration came from reading LeMasters' (1975) tavern approach and his attempt to grasp the culture of building workers, their attitudes to family and work life and their perspectives and suspicions of the 'other' (e.g. the managerial classes, women, ethnic minorities). LeMasters spent five years immersed in the life of a tavern where building workers socialised and, apart from writing up his observations, he also learnt to play pool and eventually became part of the winning team in the tavern's champion's league.

Amidst the disruptive backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations are navigating toward a new normal, leveraging digital technologies to reconfigure business processes and operational practices. This study delves into the transformative effects of digitalization on project management, with a focus on integrating data-savvy talent in a data-rich era. Employing a mixed methods approach, data were collected from June to November 2022, providing a comprehensive blend of various perspectives. Quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted successively in this study to explore the formation mechanism of digital competence of talents in project management and analyze the practical experience and expectations on the impact of data-savvy talents on project management. This study highlights the crucial role of organizations in actively shaping digital competencies to align with the changing demands of project management. It also emphasizes the increasing importance of data-savvy talents, whose intrinsic understanding of digital technologies and business models is essential in transforming the project management landscape. The outcomes of this study offer both theoretical insights into the nexus of digital competence, talent management, and project management, and practical guidelines for effectively integrating new talents into project management practices.

Project management practices are being profoundly changed due to a combination of demographics and technological advancements. This study exploresthe question of how the data-rich era is transforming the talent pipeline in projectwork. We followed a mixed methodology between June and November 2022 to benefit from diverse data and perspectives.We undertook an international survey with 124 responses and semi-structured interviews from a purposive sample of 24 interviewees to investigate the trends, areas of impact and key points of attention. The studyshows that organizational talent support and clear digital competence requirements will significantly affect the development of personal digital competence. Especially developing and training talents play a more important role than attracting new talents and retaining existing talents. Additionally, individual digital competence and a clear definition of digital applications in projectswill enormously enhance the performance of individuals in project environments.

The digital transformation in project management is causing disruption on how the organizations recognize and value the skills and expertise of the new data-savvy talents in organization’s decision-making processes for improved project delivery. Existing research on digital transformation in projects has mainly focused on what technologies can help organizations and people achieve, without connecting to the disruptions that technologies bring to projects human and social capital. To address this deficiency and harness the data-rich era, there is a need to go beyond the prevailing technical line of thought and think about people’s issues in project settings. Therefore, this research aims to examine talent management initiatives for project management professionals on how they can exploit the inherent advantages of the data-rich era and digital transformation to build an inclusive workplace. The study poses two research objectives, first to understand how project management professionals experience the trends of the data-rich era in the project environment and data-savvy talent (also in light of the changing demographics in the sector) and second to identify the opportunities and obstacles for managing project management talent to deliver projects in the data-rich era. To answer these questions, this paper uses semi-structured interviews from a purposive sample of 24 interviewees with diverse project management experience. The interviewees were recruited from three main categories of stakeholders from industry, academia, and professional institutions. The research through qualitative data analysis and abductive thinking first identifies an overemphasis on developing data-savvy talent in the expense of attracting or retaining it. Second, the study documents the existence of six clusters of opportunities and obstacles in delivering of projects through data savvy project management talent. Accordingly, the identified themes/clusters of connectivity, communication, information management, project delivery, disruption, and project work and wellbeing provide new directions for talent management practices such as attracting, developing and retaining data-savvy talent in the data-rich era.