PhD in Construction Engineering and Management

Current position: Research Assistant Professor, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

Research focus: green/sustainable building and construction

The world faces serious sustainability problems. Green building technologies can play a significant role in solving them. As defined by the World Green Building Council, “a ‘green’ building is a building that, in its design, construction or operation, reduces or eliminates negative impacts, and can create positive impacts, on our climate and natural environment. Green buildings preserve precious natural resources and improve our quality of life.”

Many countries around the world are promoting the adoption of green building technologies and practices in their construction industries. Compared to developed countries, developing countries face even more sustainability challenges, but until recently, limited research efforts have been devoted to helping these countries to solve their sustainability challenges by the adoption of green building technologies.

Amos dedicated his PhD research to the adoption and promotion of green building technologies in the developing world and developed a novel “Implementation Strategy” to this end. In developing countries like Ghana, Amos’ home country, cost and lack of government incentives are two major hindrances to the implementation of green building technologies.

Given these hitches, Amos’ project activities included adopting strategies from developed countries such as Australia, the United States, and Canada and applying those strategies with recognition to the Ghanaian contextual challenges. By comparing developed with developing countries, his research also brings to light how the adoption of green building technologies can be promoted on a global level. He also collaborated with local construction industry professionals and organisations to disseminate the results of the research.

In the future, Amos intends to engage in interdisciplinary research where models and systems will be developed that adopt building information modelling, artificial intelligence, and other digital technologies for resolving issues in green building practice and projects.

The jury was impressed by this engaged scientist conducting research on a highly relevant issue especially for developing countries with their often young and growing population.

Take a look at this video that briefly introduces Amos and his research: