Since the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak as a pandemic, many countries have declared a complete national lockdown after a remarkable spike in COVID 19 cases. These decisions have restricted the movement of people and resulted in a complete shutdown of many businesses across many sectors. The construction industry, as a significant growth driver of the economy with no exception, has also been completely shut down. All the developments and projects were postponed until further notice. It is, therefore, a prudent to address the impact of the pandemic at the outset and end of the crisis to prepare for any future possibility and gain lessons for plans. This study aims to investigate the effect of COVID 19 on the construction industry's survival. The impacts and fallout have been determined and evaluated through the recruitment of construction experts and practitioners. The impacts have been classified into different groups which include economic, human resources. The study implied two methods include exploratory interviews and questionnaire surveys. The study found the most prominent impacts of COVID 19 are the suspension of projects, labour impact and job loss, time overrun, cost overrun, and financial implications. The findings of this study shed light on the consequences of the sudden occurrence of pandemic and raise awareness of the most critical impacts which can’t be overlooked. The findings also help project stakeholders to realise the sequences of the sudden epidemic and prepare for the worst-case scenario during the planning stage of the construction projects.
Construction industry is characterized in nature as complex, fragmented, dynamic and involves many parties therefore effective communication is essential to overcome these challenges. Many researchers found that the industry faces major challenge to ensure effective and successful communication throughout the lifecycle of the project which therefore resulted to project failure. Poor communication in construction industry had been addressed in previous research studies; however, this paper presents and examines the identification of causes and effects which lead to poor communication. Further investigations on previous literature were conducted to extract the causes and effects which contributed to poor communication in construction industry. Similarity technique was applied to avoid duplications in the identified causes and effect of poor communication. Using the frequency technique, from the 33 causes of poor communication it was found that the most dominant cause is lack of effective communication. Whereas, out of 21 effects from poor communication, it was found that highly repeated effect is time overrun. These findings will serve a good platform for further investigation on the relevancy of causes and effects to the local construction practitioners. Keywords:Causes; Effects; Poor Communication; Construction Industry. Article History:Received: 25 September 2017Accepted: 10 December 2017 1-IntroductionConstruction industry defers from other industrial sectors by its distinctive characteristics and structures [1]. It is an expandable and complex sector in which it develops over time to accommodate and shelter the rise of population number it also involves many parties from public and private sectors [2,3]. These characteristics have resulted in more complexity and challenge to produce effective, sustainable and acceptable quality products [4]. Amongst these challenges is poor communication among construction teams. Poor communication is described in this context as ineffective, unsuccessful, and deficient and lack communication process of project information which should be avoided in construction industry [5]. As the key aspect to construction project success is effective communication [6,7].Poor communication has many effects and consequences in construction industry such as cost overruns, time overruns, dispute and finally project failure. It was proven that unsuccessful communication leads to unproductive outcomes [4].Project Management Institute [8] investigated communication in organization specifically in construction projects and found that by adopting effective communication during the construction of the project it can help in meeting the stipulated goals and objective of the projects. It also found that highly effective communication can achieve better time and cost management in producing successful projects.Poor communication in the construction workplace can be either in large scale or small scale. Large scale forms between construction parties such as consultant, client and contractor. Ho...
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