A Review on Outbreaks of Pandemic in Construction Industry: Impacts and Control Strategies for Outbreak

Tan, Shih Jiin (2021) A Review on Outbreaks of Pandemic in Construction Industry: Impacts and Control Strategies for Outbreak. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

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Abstract

The unexpected outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic in the world has led to a serious global economic downturn. The Malaysia government has introduced Movement Control Order (MCO), Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO) and Recovery Movement Control Order (RMCO) in order to control the spreading of Covid-19 virus. The movement control has been enforced starting from March 2020 until present April 2021, and it would be prolonged until the nations have completed the vaccination for Covid-19. During the MCO period, most of the businesses were shut down except for the essential services. The enforcement of MCO in Malaysia caused most of the industries such as the manufacturing, agricultural, food and drinks, tourism etc. have suffered with huge daily losses and the unemployment rate during the MCO period has been increased as well. The construction sector also was the one of the industries that been hugely affected by the outbreak of Covid-19. Both of the contractors and developers were facing the risk to be imposed liquidated damages (LD) by the homebuyer due to the late delivery of property. At the same time, the contractors were suffering with the additional cost incurred for the management of sites. A study has been conducted in order to review and identify the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic towards the local contractors. Such study also recorded the strategies used to overcome the challenges as well. This study was conducted through literature review that mainly referred to the articles from newspapers and internet; questionnaire survey with a total of 70 respondents and in-depth interview with three experts with different professional background. The collected findings have been recorded in the Chapter 4 of this study. The responds from the questionnaire survey were presented by using frequencies and such results obtained were supported by the opinions and sharing from the experts. In short, the identified actual impacts that the most likely to be happened on the local contractors were project delays and financial difficulties. Whereas the identified strategies that the most likely to be adopted to resolve the problems were referring to the first stage of loan moratorium for 6 months, improving the quality of works to reduce the unexpected future costs and also convening an outbreak control team to monitor the enforcement of SOP, claim for extension of time (EOT) and reschedule the working programmes. The limitation of this study was the uncertainty on the information of policies stated as the study was conducted during MCO and RMCO period. For the recommendation of future study, attentions were required on the introduction of any new policy or aid provided by the government to help the local contractors in terms of financial and technology aspects.