Problem Statement
The world is now facing the Covid-19 pandemic from all directions and sectors
In 2019, the Coronavirus started spreading from Wuhan, China, and WHO (World Health Organization) adopted the official name of "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2" (SARS-CoV-2) on 11 February 2020 and announced the world pandemic outbreak on 11 March 2020 On 1 st September 2022, the confirmed cases were 6,405,044 cases in Indonesia, 617,998 cases in Myanmar, 3,913,536 cases in the Philippines, and 11,450,998 cases in Vietnam (Figure 1.1)
Figure 1 1 Covid-19 Confirmed Cases in Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, and
The pandemic significantly impacted each country's education, health and safety, business, and infrastructure, including engineering works and construction Millions of enterprises face an existential threat leading to food security, public health, unemployment, and governments to a new introduction and new legislation worldwide Every country's health and safety sector is the most impacted by the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic Following Health and Safety sector, the world's economy was also severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic compared to Global Financial Crisis (GFC), particularly in developing countries The country's economy can be described and seen based on the GDP of each country which is an essential measure of national success Annual GDP is used to compare the national economy by size
We can see the enormous difference in GDP between Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the Covid-19 pandemic that went down during the pandemic era
Figure 1 2 Comparison in percent of GDP between the Covid-19 pandemic and GFC
(Source: UNCTAD secretariat calculations, based on official data and estimates generated by United Nations Global Policy Model.)
Like, any other sector, the construction sector also had been affected in many different ways by fewer employment opportunities Not only job opportunities but also financial situations and delays in the project schedule are also severely affected
The GDP growth for each country had dropped during the Covid-19 pandemic from 5.2% to 4.6% (Figure 1.3)
Figure 1 3 GDP Growth in Southeast Asia
Figure 1 4 IMF projections of real GDP growth rate (2020-2025)
(Source: UNCTAD secretariat calculations, based on IMG, world economic outlook
Construction organizations must address concerns regarding all aspects of the safety and welfare of employees to prevent widespread fear and economic uncertainty The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) economy is better prepared, so the economic shock associated with foreign exchange reserves and macroeconomic positions from Covid-19 became more profound and long-lasting
Moreover, SEA provides a lot of job opportunities while doing infrastructural development The construction industry also offers many job opportunities and the economy, including foreign collaboration and investment During the Covid-19 pandemic, it isn't easy to cooperate and invest locally because of the lockdown, and it can impact infrastructural development, including the construction industry According to the GolbalData report, the construction industry for the region was expected to contract by 8.5 percent in 2020 due to the accompanying investment in housing and infrastructure As the direct impact of Covid-19, there can be a slowdown of available materials and labor and terminations of projects, leading to business challenges for both short-term and long-term Many researchers are finding from various directions how Covid-19 affected several sectors of the economy, education, and other infrastructure works This study also aims to find and investigate the positive and negative impact of Covid-19 on the construction industry and discuss the contribution to the new normal life and future.
Research Objectives
-To identify the impact of Covid-19 by the time of before, during, and after the pandemic on a construction project
-To investigate how much the impact of Covid-19 influences the project or companies
-To contribute to the analysis for the practical conditions and suggest the future study regarding Covid-19
Scope of Study
This research will be bounded within the following boundaries to get a complete analysis of the above objectives
1 This study will be considered the impact of Covid-19 in these countries: Myanmar, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia, since the pandemic is still accelerating in Southeast Asia
2 For the size of the organization, this study will focus on SMEs (small and medium enterprises) because SMEs contribute to creating jobs, developing the economy, and mobilizing social resources Therefore, during the pandemic, SMEs can suffer a lot, leading to other effects like increasing unemployment consecutively
3 For the data collection, the stakeholders will involve as owners, consultants, contractors, and engineers.
Contribution to Academic and Practical Field
This study can contribute to the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the level of Covid-19 impacts for both the negative and positive impacts on the construction industry The Delphi technique's contribution is that since the experts or respondents are always anonymous, it helps to reduce the pressure to conform and the impact of dominant individuals Furthermore, no one respondent can shift the group's opinions since the responses are weighted equally Then, the reactions were analyzed by correlation and reliability tests first to check their correlation and differences Next, EFA analysis was done to get precise impacts in the same group After the quantitative analysis was finished, the interview with experts was conducted The qualitative analysis was done by creating word cloud by NVivo software to make the impacts more precise and accurate b Practically
This research aims to identify the influence of Covid-19 impact on construction projects or companies so the real-time difficulties faced in the Southeast Asia construction industry can be understood by each impact on their relative category on
Time, Cost, Quality, and Safety of the workers By attributing the impacts, the negative impacts obtained by Covid-19 during the pandemic can be avoided, or revise the actions for the future project and the backup plan under the emergency or unforeseen crisis category Despite that, there are also positive changes with huge impacts Those positive impacts can be implemented in future construction projects and updated more and more to get better performance and result in the future construction industry.
Impacts of Covid-19 on the Construction Industry
The Covid-19 pandemic makes all sectors of the world a headache Also, the construction sector has had a significant impact that is sensitive to the economic cycle The Covid-19 outbreaks have simultaneously affected the infrastructure, industrial production, and financial situations Because of the significant impact of the Coronavirus, some construction companies and engineering projects worldwide have been closed, which can also lead to unemployment In addition, the construction companies had to have a challenging job ahead, ensuring their workers by social distancing guidelines from their respective countries All of these situations have caused great concern and uncertainty in the construction industry
Moreover, the financial situation, the construction industry, and construction projects have been suspended, delayed, or altered The workers' safety is also one of the significant impacts and needs proper protection The practice and providing a safe working environment become a major challenge, especially when multiple entities of various sizes are working together (Penaloza et al.,2020), (Woolley et al l.,2020), (Apurva Pamidimjukkals et al., 2021)
The Covid-19 pandemic caused many disruptions in various fields of the world The rapid spread of the Coronavirus leads to lockdowns, restrictions by authorities, delays in projects that have a further loss to finances, and the availability of human resources, materials, and equipment However, the positive attitude of all stakeholders in accepting the modification of specifications for available resources, mutual agreements to various changes, adjustment to precautionary and preventive measures, and transformation to the digital workplace by changing to the right path from the disruptions caused by Covid-19 (Muhammad Sami Ur Rehman et al , 2021).
General Process of Covid-19 Impacts Procedure
In this study, the impacts of Covid-19 on the construction industry will be proceeded by using two steps, "Identification of Impacts" and "Assessment of Impacts." The two steps mentioned above, identification and assessment, will be done by conducting literature reviews of academic papers and journals, questionnaire surveys, and interviews with experts
2.2.1 Identification of Impacts of Covid-19
The construction industry is one of the most influential sectors affected by Covid-
19 and was affected negatively and positively Since Covid-19 is a world pandemic, most of the impacts can be considered negative impacts generally, but there are also positive impacts, especially on advanced technology parts As everyone knows, the health and safety sector is the most influential one, and it is also included in considering the impacts on the construction industry This is because the construction industry needs a lot of human resources, and it is essential to keep everyone in the project safe Moreover, the most basic three factors of construction, time, cost, and quality, also need to be managed carefully to get a successful project Therefore, when the impacts of Covid-19 are identified, they should be thought of from various points of view
According to the paper of M K S Al-Mhdawi et al., [1], a multistep research method was adopted, including a literature review and semi-structured interviews, data collection by each identified factor, and using several tests like Cronbach's Alpha test and Mann-Whitney U test by examining the impacts on both public and private sectors As a result, the factors affected by Covid-19 turned out to the safety management measures, difficulties in interpreting contracts, cost of construction materials, and risk management practices
Mohammad Raoufi, A.M.ASCE, and Aminah Robinson Fayek, M.ASCE [7], tried to define the methodology by introducing the most recent motivation concepts to identify the factors affecting construction crew performance and by illustrating the proposed methodology and findings from data analysis This paper provides a comprehensive set of factors influencing the construction crew performance by presenting and defining a novel methodology to identify the motivational factors for the construction crew and measure the improvement of those motivational factors
On the other hand, Mohammad Raoufi et al [8] identified the impact by conducting the preliminary findings for the survey in North America and based on those findings, and they tried to assess the mitigation of the effects of Covid-19 to help the construction organization during the Covid-19 pandemic This paper's result helps not only during the current pandemic period but also helps for the post-pandemic period by developing evidence-based operational strategies
Moreover, in the paper by S S King et al [14], the mechanisms for reducing the negative impact of Covid-19 were explored They did the research by collecting and analyzing the interview data The result of this paper shows the significant findings on the impacts of Covid-19 on the infrastructure construction industry from the point of view of financial problems and, finally, the mechanisms for addressing the legal, productivity, and environmental supports
In this study, firstly, the identification of impacts was made by reviewing the literature through academic papers and journals from academic websites like Google Scholar, Research Gate, Science Direct, and Academia The list of impacts found in those papers is arranged and labeled by combining the impacts which have similar meanings based mainly on the negative and positive impacts with the consideration of occupational health and safety, construction schedule, cost of the construction material, and quality of the project performance Then, a discussion with professors reduced the impacts, and finally, based on the literature review and discussions, 49 impacts (32 negative impacts and 17 positive impacts) were determined They were mentioned in the following table 2.1 The impacts were identified from the literature and references, and the numbers shown in the third row represent the reference number mentioned in the reference section
Table 2 1 Identification of Impacts from Literature Review
Identification of Impacts from Literature Review
3 Increase in rental fee of machinery and operators
4 Uncertainty in bank insurance and the policy for loan
5 Late payment to contractors and salary cuts
6 Increase in the tax rate and currency exchange rate
8 Disruption in workload because of sickness
9 Dramatic rising of material and equipment prices
10 Shortage of manpower, material and equipment
11 Delays in the starting dates of the new projects
12 Difficulties in staggering the work hours
13 Delays in approvement of legal applications and documents from government
17 Difficulties in working with foreign partner organization
18 Difficulties in recircuiting foreign workers
20 Uncertainty in quality of local products
21 Difficulties in implementati on and
✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 9 compliance of social distancing rules
22 Increasing in claims, disputes and litigation
23 Difficulties in implementati on of new health protocols
25 Increase in worker layoffs and unemployme nt
26 Decrease in work productivity and efficiency
27 Reducing of the number of projects
28 Lack of knowledge about Covid-
29 Restriction in usage of public transports
30 Restriction in the entrance of site for both workers and outside visitors
32 Lack of communicati on between the "work from home" team and "On
33 Always checking the new policy announced by government
35 Restructuring the safety plan including the rules of social distancing
36 Implementati on of advanced technology
37 Flexibility in adjusting the project schedule
40 Hiring the health assistance for protecting and providing
✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 6 health issues for on-site workers
41 Recruiting the skilled local workforce
42 Training the local workforce to become skilled worker and to substitute the foreign workers
43 Availability of health protocols for
44 Flexibility in adjusting workload by allowing
45 Providing the online platform like
Team" to get the better communicati on
46 Education for worker about the pandemic
47 Providing health insurance for workers
48 Availability of PPE at the construction site
49 Providing suitable accommodati on for workers
2.2.2 Assessment of the Impacts of Covid-19
After the impacts were identified, they were assessed to investigate the effectiveness level in the construction industry There are two approaches for assessing the impacts of Covid-19, and this study focuses on the quantitative approach in SMEs will be done first To emphasize on the SME companies, the size of the organization was set as three different categories: fewer than 20 employees, 20-50 employees and 21-200 employees based on the standard average size of SME in Southeast Asia [47] SMEs is one of the major players in the global economy nowadays by accounting for between 89% to 99% of total establishments, and between 52% and 97% of total employment in Southeast Asia The real contribution by SMEs are increasement of income, employment, gender and youth empowerment through the diverse business participation and widespread presence in non-urban and rural areas For example: the construction projects for this study also focus for non- urban areas like Pyin Oo Lwin Township in Myanmar and Tanjung Pinang Township in Indonesia The Delphi technique was created for forecasting the impact and setting priorities, especially in situations of limited availability of information To get information and data, the survey questionnaire was made based on the identified impacts and spread to the respondents related to the construction industry When the responses were obtained, they were analyzed by using SPSS software, and the short interview questions were created as the second round The participating experts comment on different statements or questions related to specific fields In this technique, the opinions are fed back to participants across multiple discussion rounds of the same set of these Each round of performance can be carried out with the help of dedicated software, and after each round, the panelists can review the results based on the added quantitative and qualitative information (Daniel Beiderbeck.,2021)
Interview Questions and Answers
After getting the analysis results from the first round of questionnaires, the ranking of the impacts of Covid-19, both in the positive direction and negative direction, in four countries: Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, and Vietnam were investigated The interview questions were constructed based on the findings of the first-round questionnaire and the additional literature review The interview questions are mentioned in the appendix
Figure 2 2 Identification of Impacts for Interview by Literature Review
2.3.2 Qualitative Analysis of Answers from Interview
When the interview with experts was done, the answers were done qualitative analysis by using NVivo Software NVivo software is mainly used for unstructured or mix-structured text, video, paragraph, and image data, unlimited data to access qualitative analysis Apart from that, NVivo software also helped in improving the accuracy of the qualitative studies Because of using NVivo software, time and energy can be saved a lot for data classification, and the data can also be managed easily, and consequently, the results were also accurate and reliable When the researchers have a lot of transcripts, and when they want to ease the process of coding, NVivo software can help to identify the common words In this research, importing the interview questionnaire data were put first, and then exploring the data along with extruding the key words from the data After that, the query is run to a search query for keywords, and the results are displayed (The step-by-step explanation for running the analysis is mentioned in the appendix.)There are also some disadvantages that can get from the NVivo software, is that it is not affordable, especially for scholars and researchers in developing countries Moreover, since NVivo provides the thematic classification of data based on keywords, there can be some debates: for example, in assisting researchers in identifying common keywords in documents.
Research Process
The research process includes three main steps: i Identification of the impacts of Covid-19 on the construction industry ii Determining the most influenced impacts by Covid-19 iii Interviewing experts the responses and future recommendations based on the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic
3.1.1 Identification of the impacts of Covid-19 on the construction industry
The first task to be done in the study is the identification of the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, especially in developing countries The list of impacts was identified from the literature review as mentioned in chapter 2 (Table 2.1), and they were divided into two parts, negative impacts and positive impacts From the process of identification, 49 impacts (32 negative impacts and 17 positive impacts) related to
Questionnaire Development based on discussion with Professors
Descriptive Analysis on Impacts by Covid-19
Exploratory Factor Analysis on Impacts of Covid-19
Execution 2nd Round by doing Interview
Distribution of Key Findings and Future Recommendations
Contribution of Covid-19 Impacts occupational health and safety, project schedule, construction material and machine costs, quality of project performance, and contractual terms
The questionnaire was constructed into two parts: part 1 was based mainly on the position of the respondents, nationality, and the size of the organization because this study was established in Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, and Vietnam The reason for choosing those countries is that the Covid-19 pandemic is far more than a health crisis, it impacts Socio-Economic, but the level of impact varies from country to country Because of this world pandemic, poverty, unemployment, and inequalities can be increased globally The developing countries, which are still trying to develop and reduce poverty, significantly had more huge impacts than other developed countries That’s why the author decides to emphasize developing countries The size of the organization was included in part 1 of the questionnaire divided into three options: fewer than 20 employers, 21-50 employers, and 51-200 employers In part 2 of the questionnaire, the impacts of Covid-19 were established with a 5 Likert scale The respondents had to choose among five options from "1= Strongly Disagree" to
"5= Strongly Agree" After that, the questionnaire was conducted in the SME construction industry in four developing countries: Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, and Vietnam
Table 3 1 The Attribution of Sample
Role Owner Main Contractor Sub-Contractor Consultants
Position Director Project Manager Site Supervisor Engineer Others
Size of Organization Fewer than 20
3.1.2 Determining the most influenced impacts by Covid-19
The responses about the impacts of Covid-19 from the four countries were investigated and ranked each country, and then the comparison and discussion of the impacts among the four countries were done as the first stage
In the second stage, Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, or Spearman’s p, a nonparametric correlation statistic, was used to measure the strength and direction of association between two rank-ordered variables In the Spearman correlation coefficient, it is necessary to know about the monotonic function The monotonic function can be explained as the three following figures
Figure 3 2 Monotonic Function (Increasing, Decreasing, and Non-monotonic)
The meaning of those three monotonic functions are;
• Monotonically increasing, which means as much as the “x” variable increases, “y” variable increases
• Monotonically decreasing: as much as the “x” variable increases, “y” variable decreases
• Non-monotonic: when “x” variable increases, “y” variable can increase or sometimes decrease
It will be meaningful to implement Spearman’s correlation associated with a monotonic relationship to determine the strength and direction of the correlation between the variables or the variables are in non-monotonic relationship
The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test was used to find out the significance level of the survey or experiment results In this study, One-Way ANOVA was used to describe if there is any statistical different between the means of three or more independent groups In ANOVA, if there is no difference among group means, the null hypothesis will be accepted, and if any group differs significantly from the overall group mean, the alternative hypothesis is accepted, and it can be reported that they are statically significant The significant level for this study is set at 0.05 or 5% (denoted as α), which means that the results in this analysis can only have a 5% chance of occurring or less if the null hypothesis is actually true, therefore, if p-value is less than or equal to the significance level (pα, the null hypothesis cannot be rejected, and there is no significant difference
EFA analysis was done to understand the relationship between variables and identify the latent variable by focusing on whether the number of variables of interest related to several unobservable factors EFA analysis can be used to determine three stages as the basic i Deciding the number of factors ii Choosing an extraction method iii Choosing a rotation method
For EFA analysis, the value of statistic (from 0.5-1) indicates the appropriateness of the factor analysis Below 0.5 indicates the inappropriate factor analysis
The main goal for using Cronbach's Alpha was to understand the responses to the various items match well, which means they should be highly correlated Each question should correlate as highly as possible with every other question If the answers to the questions are highly correlated, this is called high internal consistency Cronbach's Alpha measures the internal consistency of the scale And thus, gives of how good or bad the measurement accuracy, the so-called reliability, of a group of items is
Cronbach's alpha does not test whether the individual items are influenced by only one or several latent variables
A high value of Cronbach's Alpha is not evidence that the items are influenced by only one latent variable (Moosbrugger and Kelava 2012) In order that the reliability of the scale can be estimated using Cronbach's Alpha, the condition must be fulfilled that all questions or items measure the same latent variable If all items measure the same latent variable, Cronbach's Alpha tells how well these items measure the latent variable
𝜎 𝑥 2 ) Where; k refers to the number of scale items σ2yi refers to the variance associated with the item i σ2x refers to the variance associated with the observed total scores
Alternatively, Cronbach's Alpha equation can also be described by
Where; N = Number of Items v = Average variance c = Average inter-item covariance between items
The result got from Cronbach's Alpha test can be interpreted according to the following table
The result of Cronbach's Alpha test will come out with two statistics, i Reliability Statistics ii Item-Total Statistics
Cronbach's Alpha Output as the reliability statistics should be >0.7 (the best value), and if the items are less than 10, they should be >0.5 Therefore, if the reliability of the questionnaire results were less than 0.5, that data was inappropriate and unacceptable
The interview questions were created based on the result of the first round of data on the impacts of Covid-19, and then they were sent out to the experts who have at least five years of working experience and were still working during the pandemic
As soon as the data (answers to interview questions) were received, the data were put in the NVivo software, and the analysis was done by using the word frequency (word cloud) approach When the results were come out according to questions one by one, the impacts and discussions based on each question were clarified according to the word cloud The process of running the qualitative analysis in NVivo software by word frequency approach was mentioned in the appendix.
Responses on the Impacts of Covid-19 on the Construction Industry
After the questionnaire was created to get responses on the impacts of Covid-19, the questionnaire was sent out to the respondents working at SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) companies in four countries: Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, and Vietnam, the developing countries There are more than 100 respondents, and the percentage of respondents is 26 percent, 30 percent, 18 percent, and 26 percent in Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, and Vietnam, respectively The pie chart which represents the percentage of respondents in four countries is mentioned below
Figure 4 1Percentage of Respondents by Nationality
The working experience of each respondent is at least three years, and most of them are still working during the pandemic For working experience, 13% of the respondents have less than 3 years of experience, 27% of the respondents had 3 to 5 years of experience, 35% of the respondents had 5 to 10 years of experience, and 25% of the respondents had more than 10 years of experience Based on the data, the impacts of Covid-19 on the construction industry were judged reliably by the respondents
Figure 4 2 Percentage of Respondents by Year of Experience
The position of the respondents is focused on the director, project manager, supervisor, and engineer Furthermore, the roles of the respondents who received the questionnaire are owner, main contractors, sub-contractors, and consultants The percentage of respondents based on the role and position was mentioned in Table 4.1, and it is shown below
Table 4 1 Percentage of Respondents by Role & Position
As the size and the type of the company, the companies are categorized into three types which are fewer than 20 employees, 21-50 employees, and 51-200 employees, since this study is focused on SME (Small & Medium Enterprises) companies Among them, 17% of the companies have fewer than 20 employees, 35% have 21-
50 employees, and 47% have 51-200 employees Following the size of the companies, the types of companies are categorized into public, private, and joint ventures The responses are obtained from public companies at 32%, private companies at 52%, and joint venture companies at 16% The data are also shown in the graphs below
Figure 4 3 Percentage of Respondents by Size of Organizations
Figure 4 4 Percentage of Respondents by Type of Organization
Ranking, Comparison and Analysis of Covid-19 Impacts
4.2.1 Ranking of the Impacts of Covid-19 on Each Country
After confirming that the respondents had the same opinions on the impacts of Covid-19, the impacts were ranked according to each country and then compared between the four countries which are Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, and Vietnam, to see the difference in the level of influence by the impacts and the discussion based on the comparison among four countries was mentioned below
Table 4 2 Top 3 impacts of Covid-19 on the construction industry in Myanmar
1st Flexibility in adjusting workload by allowing "Work from Home" 3.97
Providing the online platform like
"Zoom Meeting" or "Microsoft Team" to get the better communication
3rd Always checking the new policy announced by government 3.61
1st Disruption in workload because of sickness 4.21
2nd Difficulties in staggering the work hours 4.00
Decrease in Revenue and Increase in
Table 4 3 Top 3 impacts of Covid-19 on the construction industry in Vietnam
Country Item Rank Impact Mean
Always checking the new policy announced by government
2nd Availability of PPE at the construction site 4.25
Flexibility in adjusting workload by allowing
Decrease in Revenue and Increase in Additional Expenses
2nd Disruption in material supplies 4.43
3rd Shortage of manpower, material, and equipment 4.25
Table 4 4 Top 3 impacts of Covid-19 on the construction industry in Indonesia
Country Item Rank Impact Mean
Always checking the new policy announced by government
Providing the online platform like "Zoom Meeting" or "Microsoft Team" to get the better communication
2nd Education for workers about the pandemic 3.79
Preparation of Backup Plan for pandemic 3.76
Travel limitations for workers because of lockdown
2nd Disruption in workload because of sickness 3.83
Table 4 5 Top 3 impacts of Covid-19 on the construction industry in Philippines
Country Item Rank Impact Mean
Providing the online platform like "Zoom Meeting" or "Microsoft Team" to get the better communication
Training the local workforce to become skilled workers and substituting the foreign workers
Flexibility in adjusting workload by allowing
3rd Availability of PPE at the construction site 3.70
Restriction in the entrance of site for both workers and outside visitors
2nd Restriction on the usage of public transports 4.35
Late payments to contractors and salary cuts 4.15
4.2.2 Comparison of Impacts between Four Countries
Table 4 6 Comparison of Negative Impacts of Covid-19 on the Construction
Country Negative Impacts of Covid-19 on Construction Project
Travel limitations for workers because of lockdown
Disruption in workload because of sickness
Interruption of Planning and Scheduling
Disruption in workload because of sickness
Difficulties in staggering the work hours
Decrease in Revenue and Increase in Additional Expenses
Interruption of Planning and Scheduling
Delays in approvement of legal applications and documents
Restriction in the entrance of the site for both workers and outside visitors
Restriction on the usage of public transports
Late payments to contractors and salary cuts
Disruption in workload because of sickness
Reducing the number of projects
Decrease in Revenue and Increase in Additional Expenses
Shortage of manpower, material, and equipment
Restriction in the entrance of the site for both workers and outside visitors
Disruption in workload because of sickness
To prevent the rapid spread of coronavirus (Covid-19), WHO (World Health Organization) announced following the social distancing rules, and some regions with a severe infection rate were locked down Because of the lockdown, travel for workers was limited, and that impact became Indonesia's most influential negative impact A similar negative impact: restriction on the site's entrance for both workers and outside visitors was the most influential impact in the Philippines As the consequence of those impacts, the schedule for the completion of the project and the quality of the project were mainly affected The reason is that skilled workers cannot travel as they want, and from the perspective of companies, it is hard to get skilled workers since travel and entrance to the site should be limited Following those impacts, suspension of existing projects, interruption in planning and scheduling, delays in approvement of legal applications and documents by the government, and disruption in material supplies became the top five impacts in developing countries Furthermore, the workers got infected by Covid-19, so they started to get sick and had to be quarantined for the sake of other workers and to reduce the rate of infection Because of the quarantine, there was a disruption in workload due to sickness, which led to the late completion of the project This impact, "Disruption in workload because of sickness," became the most influential impact in Myanmar In Vietnam, the impact "Decrease in Revenue and Increase in Additional Expenses" became the rank one impact which is resulted from the change of currency during the pandemic and the support for PPE (personal protective equipment) and advanced technology for workers followed by the impact "cost overrun," and "Late Payment to Contractors and Salary Cuts."
Table 4 7 Comparison of Positive Impacts of Covid-19 on the Construction
Country Positive Impact of Covid-19 on Construction Project
Always check the new policy announced by the government
Providing the online platform like "Zoom Meeting" or
"Microsoft Team" to get the better communication
Education for a worker about the pandemic
Preparation of a Backup Plan for pandemic
Flexibility in adjusting workload by allowing
Providing the online platform like "Zoom Meeting" or
"Microsoft Team" to get the better communication
Restructuring the safety plan, including the rules of social distancing
Preparation of a Backup Plan for pandemic
Providing the online platform like "Zoom Meeting" or
"Microsoft Team" to get the better communication
Training the local workforce to become skilled workers and substituting the foreign workers
Flexibility in adjusting workload by allowing
Availability of PPE at the construction site
Flexibility in adjusting the project schedule
Always check the new policy announced by the government
Availability of PPE at the construction site
Flexibility in adjusting workload by allowing
Providing the online platform like "Zoom Meeting" or
"Microsoft Team" to get the better communication
Education for workers about the pandemic
In the comparison of the negative impact, the impact, which is the delay in the approval of legal documents by the government, was ranked in the top five impacts, and it was also shown above in the negative impacts category Because of that impact, people got more awareness on checking the new policy announced by the government (top one impact in Indonesia and Vietnam) to get the legal approvement on time and to complete the project on time Furthermore, the company allows flexibility in adjusting workload by allowing "Work from Home" (top positive impact in Myanmar) to obey the social distancing rule since the workers can get infected by Covid-19 if there are so many people at work and site When the workload was flexible by allowing "Work from Home", the construction company should provide advanced technology and online platforms such as Zoom Meeting or Microsoft Office to support better communication between workers working from home and at the site or office The reason is that communication also plays an essential role in implementing the project successfully
Spearman’s rho test was used to check whether the data from the two variables if there is a linear relationship or not For the Spearman result, the correlation coefficient between each item should be in the range of (-1, +1) The negative sign (-) and the positive sign (.) show that the participants or items are in positive correlation and a negative correlation significantly In this study, the impacts of Covid-19, both negative and positive, were assessed from the different perspectives of four countries: Indonesia’s Group, Myanmar’s Group, Philippines’s Group, and Vietnam’s Group
In Table 4.8, the correlation coefficient in both negative and positive impacts had a positive correlation Still, the correlation coefficient between the groups was not significant, which is within the range of (-1, +1) But near zero, meaning that the relationship between the four countries is in a non-monotonic relationship (as the value of x decreases, the value of y sometimes increases, but sometimes the value of y decreases) Therefore, it was concluded with 95% confidence that there was a significant difference between the impacts in the four countries because the impacts can be different based on the economic situation, health and safety standards, and other factors of each relative country
Table 4 8 Spearman rank correlation test between countries for the negative impacts
Note: Correlation is significant at 0.01 level (2-tailed)
Table 4 9 Spearman rank correlation test between countries for the positive impacts
4.2.4 Cronbach’s Alpha (Reliability) Test of The Covid-19 Impacts
When the identification of the impacts, both negative and positive, was done, 32 negative impacts and 17 positive impacts were identified from the literature review Those impacts were tested the reliability among the items with Cronbach’s Alpha approach in negative and positive categories, respectively
Table 4 10 Reliability Test for Negative Covid-19 Impacts
Table 4 11 Reliability Test for Positive Covid-19 Impacts
The value of Cronbach's Alpha should be greater than 0.7, and in the case of the value of Cronbach’s Alpha for negative impact is 0.930, and the value of Cronbach’s Alpha for positive impact is 0.918 Therefore, it can be concluded that the items were well correlated
After the items were investigated that they correlated well with each other, the null hypothesis test, which is ANOVA (Analysis of Variance), was performed to
Note: Correlation is significant at 0.01 level (2-tailed) analyze whether the respondents had a different opinion on the impacts of Covid-19 in the construction industry The result, shown in Table 4.3 (for negative Covid-19 impacts), 16 impacts showed that there was no significant difference (p>0.05), and
16 impacts showed that there was significant difference (p0.05), and nine impacts showed that there was significant difference (p