INVESTIGATING THE FACTORS INFLUENCING PROJECT RESILIENCE IN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY DURING A PANDEMIC

Abstract

In a volatile and uncertain environment, the world is subjected to erratic events happening that would take its toll on the country. For example, the current COVID-19 pandemic, which had been dubbed the world's worst health disaster in decades and has had a significant impact on global economic progress and business sectors. The construction industry, as a significant contributor to the country's economy, has encountered multiple barriers as a result of the pandemic (Iqbal et al., 2020). With COVID-19, it has emphasised the significance of adopting project resilience to enable the construction sector to adequately react to unforeseen events, adapt, contain, and manage challenges (Duchek, 2020). Despite its relevance and importance to the construction industry, the project resilience concept has received scant attention. As a result, this research aims to explore the concept, factors influencing project resilience in the context of a pandemic and developing project resilience questionnaire for possible future adoption.

After an extensive research review to comprehend project resilience, hypotheses are formulated for further analysis. To investigate Hypothesis 3, ‘maintaining communication and relationships is the most significant variable impacting project recovery status,' logistic regression was used. The results suggest that there is no association between project resilience variables and project recovery status, hence the hypothesis is rejected. Following that, for evaluation of the direction and strength of variables association, a correlation test is employed. Variable 1 ‘alertness to scope and performance deviations' was found to have a positive correlation with project recovery status. Furthermore, T-Test (One sample and independent) was adopted to determine whether there is a significant difference between the mean of the independent variables and the nature of the project respectively. The findings revealed that the influence of all five project resilience variables on construction projects is significant. Moreover, it was discovered that three variables, ‘alertness to scope and performance deviations’, ‘leadership, management capabilities and commitment’, ‘project management team, and site related factors’, differ significantly between public and private projects. This signifies that the influence of project resilience variables on public and private projects differs, which could be attributed to differences in characteristics.

Despite several studies demonstrating the construction project's constraints on the recovery status, insignificance results are obtained, which could be due to limited sample size and the existence of confounders. It was then proposed that additional research be conducted on the resilience indicators and notion of project resilience for future adoption.