Purpose The purpose of this paper is to elicit the expectations for resilient post-disaster rebuilds from Caribbean project end-users. In anticipation of future climatological, meteorological, hydrological or geophysical disasters disaster, key stakeholders can articulate and incorporate strategies for resilience development, thus leading to improved end-users’ satisfaction and confidence. Design/methodology/approach This paper engages the results of a systematic literature review that identified 24 empirical resilience factors for post-disaster reconstruction projects. These factors informed a semi-structured questionnaire to elicit the perspectives of Caribbean end-users on a seven-point Likert scale. The quantitative analysis of both factor ranking and principal component analysis was performed to identify correlations and provides further interpretations on the desires of the end-users for resilient rebuilds. Findings The results presented in this paper highlight the collective perspectives on the Caribbean end-users on what they perceived to be aiding more resilient reconstruction projects. They identified reconstruction designs mindful of future hazards, policies that aid climate change mitigation, active assessment of key structures, readily available funding sources and ensuring stakeholder’s unbiased interest as the top-most empirical factors. Factor analysis suggested collaborations with inclusive training and multi-stakeholder engagement, critical infrastructure indexing and effective governance as the critical resilience development factors. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is first of its kind to explore the perspective of the Caribbean people regarding disaster reconstruction projects. It addresses developmental avenues for measurement indicators towards resilience monitoring and improvement. Additionally, the perspectives can provide construction industry professionals with tools for improved operational resilience objective-setting guidance, for Caribbean construction.