Impact of COVID-19 responses on the construction professionals’ performance

Abstract

The central objectives of this study are to investigate the mitigating measures, put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic in the construction industry in South Africa, as well as their effect on lower-level professionals’ performance from their own perspective. An empirical analysis was undertaken using data, collected from active construction sites. A total of 104 respondents, essentially construction workers and, to a lesser extent, project managers, completed a three-part Likert scale questionnaire, administered on a voluntary basis. The data was analyzed using Excel and SPSS statistics softwares. The results from descriptive statistics, Spearman’s correlation, and the analysis of variance revealed that, firstly, the top five measures implemented include sanitization and hygiene, on-site access control using advanced technologies, keeping physical distance, training, and flexible working hours. Secondly, the findings suggest that direct health measures, such as sanitization, wearing personal protective equipment, keeping physical distance, and training, implemented by construction companies’ managers are the measures that improved their performance the most. However, the participants also indicated that actions, such as partial salary cuts and working in confine spaces, had a detrimental influence on their productivity. The limitation of the study is the use of a convenient sample that hinders the generalizability of the findings. The key contribution of this study is the identification of new factors that enhanced, other than remote work, or were an impediment to fieldworkers’ performance in the construction industry during the recent global health crisis. These outcomes might help to further understand the psychological effect of COVID-19 measures and the resulting influence on job performance. Another possible implication of the findings could be for the construction company decision-makers to consider as paramount the maximum utility of their field workers in order to preserve the overall productivity and strengthen the resilience of their businesses in times of health crises.