Analysis of COVID-19 Concerns Raised by the Construction Workforce and Development of Mitigation Practices
Open Access
- 3 May 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Frontiers Media SA in Frontiers in Built Environment
Abstract
The coronavirus outbreak has created a global health crisis that has disrupted all industries, including the construction industry. Following the onset of the pandemic, construction workers faced and continue to face unprecedented safety and health challenges. Therefore, construction employers established new safety precautions to protect the health and safety of the workforce and minimize the spread of the virus. The new precautions followed the advice and guidelines offered by different health and safety agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC). With construction projects resuming operations, it becomes important to analyze the coronavirus-related health and safety concerns of construction workforce and understand how the new safety procedures can assist on jobsites. Existing studies mostly focused on interviews and surveys with construction companies to understand the impact on project performance and supply chains. However, no study has yet to analyze the United States construction workforce. This paper fills the gap by providing a qualitative descriptive analysis of the COVID-19 complaints data gathered by OSHA from construction jobsites. Information gathered by OSHA includes the jobsite location, the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) of the construction company, the type of the complaint (i.e., formal or non-formal), and a thorough description of the complaint. N-grams were employed to analyze the complaints, detect trends, and compile a list of the most frequent concerns reported by the workforce. The analysis of the complaints data identifies safety practices that were most violated, highlights major safety and health concerns for construction workers, and pinpoints geographical areas that have seen a surge in complaints. The study also synthesized the existing research corpus and compiled a list of 100 best practices that construction employers can adopt to mitigate the concerns of the workforce. The findings of this study provide insights into the safety and health trends on construction sites, lay the foundation for future work of academicians and practitioners to address the concerns faced by construction workers, and serve as lessons learned for the industry in the case of any future pandemic.This publication has 29 references indexed in Scilit:
- Lessons learnt from easing COVID-19 restrictions: an analysis of countries and regions in Asia Pacific and EuropeThe Lancet, 2020
- The Impact of Pandemic Crisis on the Survival of Construction Industry: A Case of COVID-19Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2020
- Does the COVID-19 Outbreak Constitute a Force Majeure Event? A Pandemic Impact on Construction ContractsJournal of the Civil Engineering Forum, 2020
- Review of the 2019 novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) based on current evidenceInternational Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, 2020
- Ian MitchellPublished by Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) ,2020
- Clinical Characteristics of 138 Hospitalized Patients With 2019 Novel Coronavirus–Infected Pneumonia in Wuhan, ChinaJAMA, 2020
- Identification of the H&S (Health and Safety Factors) Involved in Infrastructure Projects in Developing Countries-A Sequential Mixed Method Approach of OLMT-ProjectInternational Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2020
- A Comprehensive Map for Integrating Augmented Reality During the Construction PhasePublished by Periodica Polytechnica Budapest University of Technology and Economics ,2020
- Transforming the AEC Industry: A Model-Centric ApproachPublished by Periodica Polytechnica Budapest University of Technology and Economics ,2020
- Understanding the implications of digitisation and automation in the context of Industry 4.0: A triangulation approach and elements of a research agenda for the construction industryComputers in Industry, 2016