ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Built Environ.
Sec. Sustainable Design and Construction
Volume 11 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fbuil.2025.1620790
This article is part of the Research TopicPeople, Process, Product, and Policy: Exploring the Nexus For The Sustainable Digital Transformation Of The Construction IndustryView all 3 articles
Smart Contracts in Construction Procurement: Insights and Recommendations from South Africa
Provisionally accepted
- University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa
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The traditional procurement system in the construction industry has been plagued by inefficiencies, often serving as a significant obstacle to project delivery. Thus, this study examines the dynamics of adopting smart contracts for project procurement for optimal project success and delivery with insights and recommendations from the South African Construction Industry. Hence, the study employed a quantitative research approach utilizing both descriptive and inferential statistics of Mean Item Score (MIS) and Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) for data analysis, based on a purposive sampling technique. The study's findings revealed two categorized benefits of adopting smart contracts: administrative and operational efficiency of project procurement and procurement optimization; two components of legal and regulatory constraints: Transactional and legal encumbrance to smart contract implementation and legal gaps and ambiguity and two best practices: smart contract reliability practices for project procurement and consistent stakeholders’ engagement for smart contract protocol standardization. The study concludes that Smart contracts can transform global project procurement within the construction industry. The study recommends the development of a green paper on smart contract adoption and the integration of smart contracts into standard forms of construction contracts.
Keywords: procurement management, Smart contract, Blockchain technology, Construction projects, Project Procurement
Received: 30 Apr 2025; Accepted: 09 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 David, Kgomo and Aigbavboa. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Love David, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa
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