The COVID-19 pandemic has been the largest global health crisis in decades. Apart from the unprecedented number of deaths and hospitalizations, the pandemic has resulted in economic slowdowns, widespread business disruptions, and significant hardships. This study focused on investigating the early impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the U.S. construction industry since the declaration of the national emergency on 13 March 2020. The study objectives were achieved through 34 telephone interviews with project managers, engineers, designers, and superintendents that represented different states and distinct industry sectors in the United States (U.S.). The interviewees offered information on their experience with the pandemic, including the general and adverse effects experienced, new opportunities created, and risk management efforts being undertaken. The reported adverse effects included significant delays on projects, inability to secure materials on time, reduction in productivity rates, material price escalations, and others. The new opportunities that were created included projects involving the fast-track construction of medical facilities, construction of residential buildings, transportation-related work, and opportunities to recruit skilled workers. The risk management measures that were widely adopted included measures to enhance safety and reduce other project risks. The safety measures adopted included requiring employees to wear cloth face masks, adoption of social distancing protocols, staggering of construction operations, offering COVID-19-related training, administering temperature checks prior to entry into the workplace, and others. Measures to manage other project risks included the formation of a task force team to review the evolving pandemic and offer recommendations, advocating that construction businesses be deemed essential to combat delays and taking advantage of government relief programs. The study findings will be useful to industry stakeholders interested in understanding the early impacts of the pandemic on the construction industry. Industry stakeholders may also build upon the reported findings and establish best practices for continued safe and productive operations.
Project personnel working in construction sites fail to transfer invaluable experiences gained mostly due to the absence of a formalized process to record such information. Construction projects are seldom repetitive in nature and this highlights the need for organizations to have in place robust data repositories to facilitate knowledge sharing. This paper describes an effort in creating a new internal-only web-based lessons learned database named Communicate Lessons, Exchange Advice, Record (CLEAR) for the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT). A Design For Six Sigma (DFSS) approach of Identify, Define, Develop, Optimize, and Verify (IDDOV) model was used. Findings from this study will help NCDOT to institutionalize knowledge and improve project cost variations and schedule predictability. In conjunction with this database, a data dashboard is envisioned to provide effective visualizations for the upper management to make informed decisions based on the lessons information in the database. The dashboard will include success metrics such as detecting reduced numbers of claims and claims amounts, witnessing periodical increase in lessons uploaded into the database, and enhanced communication among specialized staff. This approach is a significant contribution to the existing body of knowledge in lessons learned database implementation for construction applications. The anticipated outcome of this new application will be a more efficient and effective public organization through reduced claims, improved designs, and construction workflows, and improved policies and standards. Future researchers can make use of information presented in this paper to build new robust lessons learned systems to improve organizational efficiency.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.