Supply Chain Issues in Construction due to COVID-19: Challenges and Resilience Strategies from an Owner's Perspective

9 pages•Published: May 26, 2024

Amna Salman, Wendy Peacock and Wesley Collins

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic spread worldwide and affected all countries globally. The strict lockdown sent global economies plunging as it suspended all economic activities. The continuous virus spread had significant impacts on most sectors of the economy, including construction. The construction industry faced challenges, such as labor shortages, material shortages, cost escalations, schedule delays, delayed permits, delayed approvals and inspections, travel restrictions, and serious health and safety concerns among others which hindered the timely delivery of the construction projects. As a result, owners were under immense pressure, especially public universities as there were limited buildings to accommodate the increased teaching and research activities to meet current and future needs. The aim of this research was to investigate how higher education owners mitigated construction building material delays and shortages to deliver construction projects within the timeframe needed to facilitate teaching and research activities. The study was divided into three phases: In the first phase, an extensive literature review and preliminary interviews with the owners and contractors were conducted to explore the strategies adopted to tackle the supply chain issues and their effectiveness. In the next phase, data was collected through a questionnaire survey that included open-ended and closed-ended questions. In the final phase, data was analyzed, and guidelines of best practices were created for owners to tackle issues in future similar crises.

Keyphrases: construction challenges, covid 19, owners, supply chain

In: Tom Leathem, Wes Collins and Anthony Perrenoud (editors). Proceedings of 60th Annual Associated Schools of Construction International Conference, vol 5, pages 650-658.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/jjrt
	https://doi.org/10.29007/3wq9

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{ASC2024:Supply_Chain_Issues_Construction,
  author    = {Amna Salman and Wendy Peacock and Wesley Collins},
  title     = {Supply Chain Issues in Construction due to COVID-19: Challenges and Resilience Strategies from an Owner's Perspective},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of 60th Annual Associated Schools of Construction International Conference},
  editor    = {Tom Leathem and Wes Collins and Anthony Perrenoud},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Built Environment},
  volume    = {5},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2632-881X},
  url       = {/publications/paper/jjrt},
  doi       = {10.29007/3wq9},
  pages     = {650-658},
  year      = {2024}}

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