Covid-19 pandemic lockdown: The consequences towards project success in malaysian construction industry

ABSTRACT

The Covid-19 is a pandemic issue that is causing widespread global disruption forcing lockdowns in many countries including Malaysia as an effort in disconnecting the virus from spreading. As an initiative, the Malaysia government has call for the Movement Control Order (MCO) as one of the lockdown alternatives starting on 18th March 2020. Due to that, the MCO has given a huge impact on Malaysia’s industries including the construction industry. Hence, to successfully deliver projects, time and cost become the essential component which in this current scenario, most of the on-going projects declined to deliver the project according to the time and cost as planned. Thus, this paper intends to explore the consequences of the Movement Control Order (MCO) towards project success. In getting an authentic data and fast feedback from the respondents during this current scenario, uses alternate methods as face to face interview is not encouraged. The interview sessions were held thru telephone conversation with 8 contractors in Klang Valley and Penang which randomly selected based on contractor listing in Malaysian Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) website and content analysis are used to figure out the main consequences using Nvivo software. Results from the interviews found that the MCO has resulted in 6 main impacts consists of (1) regulation compliance;(2) safety;(3) additional time for project delivery;(4) increase in development cost;(5) limited human resources supplies;and (6) limited resource availability on-site. These shows the MCO has given the negative impact to the project success. This result is important for the government to ensure their awareness on the consequences of the MCO towards construction industry and facilitate the construction players to overcome the six factors mentioned in this paper. © 2020 ASTES Publishers. All rights reserved.