THE PREVENTIVE MEASURES OF PANDEMICS ON CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS: LESSONS LEARNED FROM COVID-19?S IN SAUDI ARABIA

Abstract

Abdullah Karban, Naif Alaboud, Adnan Alshahrani*, Abdullah Bagasi and Mosaab Alaboud

The COVID-19 pandemic had disastrous effects, particularly on construction projects, which resulted to work stoppage. Though, most construction industries explored preventive measures such as social distancing, working online, wearing personal protective equipment and upholding good hygiene to keep the construction projects back on track. This study thus aimed to examine the relationships between the current state of COVID-19 pandemic on the Saudi Arabia’s ongoing construction projects and preventive measures based on the lessons learned from the pandemic. Accordingly, a purposive sample of 147 construction based professionals involved in selected projects within Saudi Arabia participated in the sirve. The results shows that COVID-19 preventive measures had significant impact on Saudi construction projects. Furthermore, project time was most significantly impacted by COVID-19 pandemic, followed by productivity, material management, human resources management, and project cost. Moreover, Pearson’s correlation exhibits a significant positive correlation (p<0.05) amongst the perceived impact of the COVID-19 preventive measures and construction projects performance. Impact of Government supports and sector differences on COVID-19 preventive measures were also assessed. The t-test results showed that companies which received government supports were perceived to have less impact of COVID-19 measures. While, using ANOVA statistics, companies that provide service for both public and private sector appeared to have most impact of COVID-19 measures. Overall, this upholds the perception that lack of adherence to COVID-19 preventive measures could distort the whole construction process. It was thus recommended that construction industries should clinch on innovative and diverse use of technologies in the age of multi-faceted disruption.