# The Role of Blockchain in Improving the Processes and Workflows in Construction Projects
## 3 Methodology
### Research Questions Definition
#### 3.1.1 What Are the Cases of Blockchain Technology in the Construction Industry? The first question in this paper aimed to identify the areas of the construction industry where blockchain has been demonstrated to be useful, as well as the most common cases related to the implementation of blockchain technologies in the construction industry. By analyzing related papers from scientific databases, we had the ability to determine the issues in the construction industry that could be solved using blockchain, and so we had the ability to identify the issues that could be best tackled using other methodologies. This will assist practitioners and researchers in their focus on the most promising blockchain applications in the construction industry. Figure 2: Systematic mapping flow. 3.1.2. What Are the Benefits and Potentials of Blockchain Technologies in the Construction Industry? This question seeks to realize the benefits and potentials of using blockchain technology in construction projects. By reviewing the papers that discussed the various applications of blockchain technologies to improve construction processes and workflows, it was possible to identify the benefits and potentials of blockchain in the construction industry. 3.1.3. What Are the Challenges of Using Blockchain Technologies in the Construction Industry? This question seeks to comprehend the difficulties of blockchain-based construction applications during implementation. Several studies from the literature were examined for the purpose of identifying these challenges. 3.1.4. How Would Blockchain Resolve the Causes of Delays and Disputes in Construction Projects? This research question seeks to better understand the role of blockchain technology in resolving some of the main construction issues, which are construction delays and disputes. For this purpose, several studies from the literature were investigated to identify the causes of the delays and disputes. Then, the solutions based on blockchain technology were then identified. 3.2. Conducting the Research  
The second step of the systematic mapping study process was to conduct the research. The reviewed papers were selected by searching scientific databases using keywords or a search string. A wide-ranging search was conducted across multiple online general and scientific databases including Google Scholar, Elsevier's Scopus, ProQuest, and Web of Science. Initially, a systematic literature search for relevant articles and papers without a time limit was conducted which resulted in a total of 2135 articles from all selected databases. To further improve the screening of the results, a number of exclusions were defined such as:  
* Limiting the search time frame between 2016 and 2020 to have a consistent a range of results across all databases;
* Non-English papers and articles;
* Material without full access;
* Material which did not focus on management or engineering aspects such as programming, theoretical, etc. In addition, the grey literature was investigated to identify the challenges of blockchain in the construction industry. 3.3. Screening of Relevant Papers  
The third step was to screen the papers for relevance after retrieving them from the databases. In this paper, a total of 2135 papers were collected from the scientific databases. Many of these papers were eliminated after the first screening based on the titles of the papers, leaving 692 papers for further screening. The papers that were omitted were not related to construction or did not satisfy one of the exclusion criteria; however, in some papers, the construction industry may have been stated in the abstracts as one of the non-financial blockchain applications. In addition, duplicated papers were eliminated by merging all the papers in Mendeley. Figure 3 shows the analysis of the publications over the years in each of the searched databases.