An Exploration of COVID-19 and Its Consideration as a Black Swan for the Construction Industry in Switzerland

Abstract

COVID-19 and its devastating yet unforeseeable effects affect the entire global economy value chain. Effects will be long-lasting and interfere with the way construction worked so far. Losses in the industry are expected to run into billions; spending on new buildings are predicted to decrease sharply and on a global long-term. COVID-19 is, depending on the viewpoint, either a “White Swan,” which is a probable event, causing massive consequences, or a “Black Swan,” which is additionally not foreseeable. The European Green Deal presented by the European Commission could serve as a new Marshall Plan to enable the long-awaited digitisation of the construction industry. A whole industry sector is called upon to undergo a digital empowerment within a very short period, for which other branches of industry have had years or even decades. Can this crisis serve as a spark for eventually starting the digitalisation of the construction industry?

Digital Transformation Framework for Facility Management based on Building Information Modelling

“…DG is only partially existing in construction (compare the surveys of 75,80). In the event of an economic crisis, it is reinvented or developed, depending on the severeness of the crisis [81]. This behavior is evident even though DG is seen as a critical success factor for data science in asset management [82] (pp 431-432).…”

Factors affecting the performance of construction industry during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case study in Turkey

“…This section provides a comprehensive literature review of previous studies related to COVID-19 and the construction industry. Some scholars have focused on the project delivery process (Assaad and El-adaway, 2021b;Ghandour, 2020), workforce and migrant workers (Koh, 2020;Gan and Koh, 2021), digitalisation and building information modelling (BIM) adoption (Wildenauer, 2021;Wang et al, 2021) and the housing sector (Allen-Coghlan and McQuinn, 2021). Moreover, some researchers and organisations have identified the early impacts of COVID-19 on the construction industry by addressing various obstacles such as occupational health and safety challenges (Stiles et al, 2021;Simpeh and Amoah, 2021;ILO Sectoral Brief, 2021;Simmons and Simmons, 2020;OSHA, 2020b), shortage of material and equipment (Alsharef et al, 2021;Deloitte, 2020) and contractual complications (Ogunnusi et al, 2020;Simmons and Simmons, 2020) through literature and qualitative reviews.…”

“…This section provides a comprehensive literature review of previous studies related to COVID-19 and the construction industry. Some scholars have focused on the project delivery process (Assaad and El-adaway, 2021b; Ghandour, 2020), workforce and migrant workers (Koh, 2020; Gan and Koh, 2021), digitalisation and building information modelling (BIM) adoption (Wildenauer, 2021; Wang et al. , 2021) and the housing sector (Allen-Coghlan and McQuinn, 2021).…”