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The Impact of COVID-19 on Project Managers in the Construction Industry

Research · July 2020

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.30407.11686

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Moses Nyathi Cecile Gerwel Proches

University of KwaZulu-Natal University of KwaZulu-Natal
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http://ndabaonline.ukzn.ac.za/UkzndabaStory/Vol8-
Issue29/The%20Impact%20of%20COVID19%20on%20Project%20Managers%20in%20the%20Constr
uction%20Industry/

02 July 2020

Volume: 8

Issue: 29

The Impact of COVID-19 on Project Managers in the

Construction Industry
BY:
- By Mr Moses Nyathi, Dr Simon Taylor and Professor Cecile Gerwel Proches
The global COVID-19 pandemic has presented project managers with “unknown
unknowns” which will inevitably change the dynamics of risk management.
Project managers in the construction industry are usually responsible for more
than one project at a time. Construction project managers in South Africa and
abroad will have to revisit and update the project risk management plan of each
project in their portfolio. These updates or changes will be dependent on the
specific project stage but will have to be made in line with COVID-19 disaster
management regulations. Construction project managers will therefore have
to be particularly cognisant of the updates pertaining to the COVID-19 disaster
management regulations.
South Africa currently has five levels of lockdown and each has a different set
of regulations. Regulations are updated at the change of each lockdown
level. Selected construction project managers in civil engineering were able to
operate during level four of lockdown, which ended on 31 May 2020, while
others in the building spectrum are permitted to operate in the remaining three
levels.
In general, a project life cycle consists of four major stages: project initiation,
planning, execution and closure (Frimpong & Oluwoye, 2018). In brief, project
initiation entails the approval of the construction project charter, which marks
the existence of the project, and typically details high-level project requirements
such as the budget, scope, schedule, success criteria and key risks. This is
followed by project planning which comprises a comprehensive refined project
budget, schedule, risks, scope and any other important project feature
requirements. Subsequently, the project goes to tender and project execution,
which entails the implementation of the project plan. The last stage of the
project life cycle is project closure, when construction has been
completed. Updating the project risk management plan will translate to re-
examining the overall effects of COVID-19 regulations on all the project stages.
Based on the aforementioned project life cycle stages, there is a high risk of
employees contracting COVID-19 in all construction projects which are currently
in the project initiation, planning or execution stages. However, completed
projects at the closure stage carry minimum risk. For construction projects
which were either at project initiation or planning stage at the beginning of
lockdown in South Africa, revised plans which now incorporate current COVID-
19 regulations as well as future regulation implications have to be taken into
account. For projects which were already at the execution stage, the project
plan may have to be updated, taking into account the required person-hours,
budget and social distancing regulations. It can be assumed that the majority of
construction projects which had reached the execution stage when the
lockdown commenced are currently behind schedule. Under normal
circumstances, project crashing and fast-tracking techniques can be used to
compress project schedule activities in order to meet the overall project
timeframe.
Project crashing refers to an allocation of extra resources such as personnel and
machinery to shorten the project
schedule (Feylizadeh, Mahmoudi, Bagherpour and Li, 2018; Ballesteros-
Perez, Elamrousy and González-Cruz, 2019). In the construction industry, it is
usually achieved through an expansion of the workforce. On the other hand,
project fast-tracking translates to parallel or simultaneous execution of project
activities, which would previously have been executed sequentially to compress
the project schedule, and applies to activities that can be
overlapped (Feylizadeh et al., 2018; Ballesteros-Perez et al., 2019). Similar to
project crashing, project fast-tracking will require more people to be on site to
execute different project activities. In the current situation, both project
crashing and fast-tracking techniques contravene COVID-19 disaster
management regulations’ subsections associated with occupational health and
safety, such as social distancing and curfew requirements. Therefore,
construction project managers have very limited options, if any, or more likely
no options, at their disposal to rectify lockdown repercussions associated with
project schedule overruns.
There is a positive relationship between project schedule overruns and project
costs overruns (Larsen, Shen, Lindhard and Brunoe, 2016; Plummer-
Braeckman, Disselhoff and Kirchherr, 2019). The more the project is delayed,
the more money will be spent on it (Larsen et al., 2016; Plummer-Braeckman et
al., 2019). Some construction entities have been remunerating full-time or
short-term contract employees during the lockdown, while the project that they
were involved in remained static. When employees resume work, they will not
complete the project on time, thereby implying that they will be contracted to
the project for an additional period of time at an additional cost. In general, the
majority of construction projects have been severely impacted by the
global pandemic, and the reality is that there will be project schedule overruns
as well as budget overruns. Inevitably, some construction projects will have to
be terminated due to lack of funding because some project sponsors’ sources of
finance were negatively affected by COVID-19. Therefore, construction project
managers, project sponsors and consultants will have to re-plan, re-think, re-
learn, adjust and adapt to the volatile diverse factors associated with the COVID-
19 pandemic in order to achieve project objectives.
References
Ballesteros-Perez, P., Elamrousy, K. M., & González-Cruz, M. C. (2019). Non-
linear time-cost trade-off models of activity crashing: Application to
construction scheduling and project compression with fast-
tracking. Automation in Construction, 97, 229-240.
Feylizadeh, M. R., Mahmoudi, A., Bagherpour, M., & Li, D. F. (2018). Project
crashing using a fuzzy multi-objective model considering time, cost, quality and
risk under fast tracking technique: A case study. Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy
Systems, 35(3), 3615-3631.
Frimpong, Y., & Oluwoye, J. (2018). Project management practice in
groundwater construction project in Ghana. American Journal of Management
Science and Engineering, 3(5), 60-68.
Larsen, J. K., Shen, G. Q., Lindhard, S. M., & Brunoe, T. D. (2016). Factors
affecting schedule delay, cost overrun, and quality level in public construction
projects. Journal of Management in Engineering, 32(1), 1-29.
Plummer-Braeckman, J., Disselhoff, T., & Kirchherr, J. (2019). Cost and schedule
overruns in large hydropower dams: an assessment of projects completed since
2000. International Journal of Water Resources Development, 1-16.
 Mr Moses Nyathi is currently enrolled for a Doctorate in Business Administration
(DBA) at the Graduate School of Business and Leadership, UKZN. His doctoral
research study focuses on “Managing stakeholder complexities: A model to curb
project costs overruns in the construction industry in South Africa”. He holds a
Master’s degree in Business Administration, Bachelor’s Degree in Project
Management and a Short Course in Construction Management. He is also
registered with Project Management South Africa (PMSA).
Professor Cecile Gerwel Proches, is an associate professor at UKZN’s Graduate
School of Business and Leadership and lectures at postgraduate and masters
level in Leadership Studies.
Dr Simon Taylor is Project Manager at UKZN’s Regional and Local Economic
Development Initiative, which is affiliated to the Graduate School of Business and
Leadership.
Photographs: Supplied

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