An investigation of the resource finding issues in highway construction projects in Sri Lanka with COVID-19 pandemic situation

Abstract

The construction resources are most necessary for running the construction projects consistently up to their finishing stage and construction resource planning and management compulsory to ensure project goal in any project that the on time handover within budget. The whole construction industry of Sri Lanka was affected by advent of COVID-19 pandemic outbreak and the most construction projects had to face the difficulties of effective resources management. The research approach has been taken in to investigate the resource finding issues that arisen with COVID-19 pandemic in four highway construction projects which selected from four provinces in Sri Lanka. The study also focused to identify the effects to projects' delay, cost and quality. Through the literature review around topic background, seventeen resource finding issues related factors were identified under three categories that human, material and financial. Then, the importance level of identified factors were justified to this particular study through the responses gathered using questionnaire survey. The responses were taken from construction professionals (project managers, planning engineers, construction managers, QA/QC engineers, quantity surveyors and site engineers) who selected according to the researcher judgement from four contractor firms. Then factors were analyzed and ranked using Relative Importance Index (RII) and descriptive statistics, utilizing Excel and SPSS software. The results presented that the whole factors perfectly affected to resource finding issues and were discussed with qualitative findings to show their effects on projects’ delay, cost and quality. Finally, concluded the identified effective solutions for continuing highway construction projects during COVID-19 pandemic period