COVID-19 health and safety challenges on construction sites: unfolding novel dimensions for construction industries in developing countries

Abstract

A sudden COVID-19 outbreak has significantly impacted construction site health and safety (H&S). Against this backdrop, this paper aimed to explore the major challenges for pandemic management in implementing COVID-19 H&S measures on construction sites, particularly in developing countries. Following a comprehensive literature review, a total of 20 relevant challenges were identified. A self-completion questionnaire survey involving Malaysian construction practitioners was further employed to prioritize these challenges using descriptive statistics. Finally, a factor analysis unfolded five major underlying dimensions of these challenges, relating to lack of resources and inherent nature of construction, negligence and ignorance, low-wage blue-collar workforce, ineffective H&S management and poor sanitizing and disinfecting strategies. This work is a valuable reference in assisting industry practitioners to further enhance H&S performance during a communicable disease outbreak such as the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the findings highlighted the current deficiencies of the H&S system in the context of a developing country and the necessity to devise responsive strategies in curbing the transmission of future diseases.

KEYWORDS:

• Challenges
• construction industry
• COVID-19 pandemic
• developing countries
• health and safety measures
• safety management

Acknowledgements

The authors express their sincere thanks to all the industry practitioners who have participated in the data collection process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

All data, models and code generated or used during the study appear in the submitted article.

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge the Ministry of Education Higher Malaysia (MOHE) for financial support under Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) Project Number: FRGS/1/2022/SS02/UTAR/02/1 for the project entitled ‘Technology Readiness Index (TRI) for the adoption of innovative technologies in construction safety science and management in Malaysia’ and UTAR Research Fund (UTARRF) Project Number: IPSR/RMC/UTARRF/2021-C1/J01.