Creativity and Innovation in the Construction Industry During COVID-19

This report, prepared by students from the Faculty of Technology Management and Business, explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the construction industry, focusing on the implementation of creativity and innovation. It examines the adoption of construction technology, such as Building Information Modeling (BIM) and drones, and the impact of job losses. The report discusses digital strategies, the C.U.R.A. project, and the rise of prefabricated construction as responses to the pandemic. The study highlights how the industry adapted to challenges by embracing new technologies and methods to maintain productivity and ensure worker safety. It emphasizes the importance of creativity and innovation in overcoming obstacles and fostering continuous improvement within the construction sector. The report concludes by emphasizing how the construction industry has adapted to the pandemic and its impact on the future.

FACULTY OF TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT AND BUSINESS
INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT
SEMESTER I
SESSION 2020/2021
TITLE
CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION ON CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY DURING
AND AFTER THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
NAME OF STUDENTS MATRIC NUMBER
KHOR CHEE YING AP190171
YAW SUET XIN AP190136
COURSE NAME : CREATIVITY & INNOVATION
COURSE CODE : UPA 20102
PROGRAMME CODE : BPC
SECTION : 6
NAME OF LECTURER : PROF. MADYA TS. DR. SEOW TA WE
DATE OF SUBMISSION : 29 NOVEMBER 2020

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First and foremost, the completion of this assignment gives us much pleasure. In
performing our assignment, we are really grateful because we managed to complete
our Creativity & Innovation assignment within the time given by our lecturer
Professor Madya Ts. Dr. Seow Ta Wee, who deserve our greatest gratitude.
He inspired us greatly to work in this assignment by giving us a good
guideline and valuable suggestions for assignment. We also would like to thank him
for teaching us in this course. Last but not least, an honorable mention goes to our
friends for the understandings and supports in completing this project. Without
workgroup, we would face many difficulties while doing this assignment.

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ABSTRACT
COVID-19 pandemic is a “wicked problem” characterized by multiple competing
problems that seem to conflict with each other, such as protecting lives and
sustaining livelihoods. But this problem can be solved through more creativity and
innovation, and this innovation has begun in response to the pandemic. Some of the
innovations have helped to reduce the risk of exposure to the coronavirus, such as
alcohol distilleries that produce hand sanitizers and DIY 3D printed face mask
manufacturers. There also have some creativity and innovation actions that taken by
the construction industry during and after the COVID-19 pandemic to help the sector
undergo this global health crisis period. This article will talk about the impact of
COVID-19 pandemic to the construction industry and also the implementation of
creativity and innovation on construction industry during and also after the COVID-
19 pandemic. Not only to go through this pandemic, creativity and innovation enable
to benefit construction industry from continuous learning and improvement. Having
standard parts kits encourages innovation in manufacturing, because manufacturers
focus on improving process efficiency, rapid development of secondary or derivative
products, or expanding their product applicability. All the lessons learned have been
learned and fed back into future projects, components and processes, and have been
continuously improved, allowing us to enter a virtuous circle of incremental
innovation benefiting the manufacturing industry. At the time of writing this article,
we have been looking for examples of how this transformation has taken place, but
honestly, it is impossible to bring justice to all the efforts made by so many
companies to unite to help communities and governments fight health. crisis. We
have only listed a few examples, but there are obviously more examples.

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CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i
ABSTRACT ii
CONTENTS iii
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Background of Study 1
1.2 Creativity and Innovation on Construction Industry 2
CHAPTER 2 THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON
CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY 3
2.1 Adoption of Construction Technology 3
2.2 Loss of Employment 4
CHAPTER 3 THE IMPLEMENTATION OF CREATIVITY AND
INNOVATION ON CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY
DURING AND AFTER COVID-19 PANDEMIC 6
3.1 During COVID-19 Pandemic 7
3.1.1 Digital Strategy 7
3.1.2 Launched C.U.R.A. Project 8
3.2 After COVID-19 Pandemic 9
3.2.1 Prefabricated Construction 9
CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION 11
REFERENCES 13

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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Construction industry is significant to the country as it rapidly evolving economy
sector. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the ongoing COVID-19
pandemic is gaining growing popularity around the globe nowadays. In general, it
indicates that the construction industry faced a severe impact of COVID-19 outbreak.
Hence, creativity and innovation play a fundamental role on construction industry at
any time which can helps to enhance the activities into worldwide construction
industry. The goal of this article is to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on
construction industry and the implementation of creativity and innovation on
construction industry during and after COVID-19 pandemic.
1.1 Background of study
As is known to us all, COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by a newly
discovered coronavirus. It was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China
and spread globally, resulting in an ongoing pandemic (Zhu et al., 2020). Therefore,
the COVID-19 pandemic had a great influence on construction industries in many
countries that cause the recession. Many of the construction projects have been
stagnated and the labors on construction site have shifted to work from home due to
the coronavirus is mainly spread between people during a close contact situation.
Moreover, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic will be indeed delayed
construction projects. Hence, the various construction projects delayed will resulting
in the shortage of labors and construction materials. There is no doubt that
contractors, engineers, architects and labors in construction industry will remain to

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undergo the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on construction industry. Besides, the
global construction industry with projects will facing the result of national supply
chain and new criterion to control the safety of the labors on site. Thus, the
government enforce social distancing guidelines has drawn great public concern to
obey the regulation to diminish the coronavirus spread to others on construction site.
In short, the society will be experienced different degrees of impacts of COVID-19
in short term and long term.
1.2 Creativity and innovation on construction industry
From the construction industry perspective, creativity refers to human make use their
inspiration to form new ways and come up with better results, whereas innovation
indicate the competence to reform the outdated activities with implementing a new
thing for enhancing the performance. As matter of fact, creativity is linked with
innovation. However, construction companies are necessary to enforce creativity and
innovation in order to adapt an ever-changing situation and bolster up the
construction projects in worldwide to provide sustainable development strategy on
the construction sector, especially during and after COVID-19 pandemic.
Besides, creativity and innovation can bring on global construction industry
to the successful evolution with developing industrial revolution 4.0 on construction
site in current COVID-19 pandemic condition and in the future. Apart from this, the
development of creativity and innovation on construction industry can help to reduce
the risk on the COVID-19 pandemic by self-protection and exploit to the formative
techniques. It should be noted that embracing the creativity and innovation
techniques on construction industry such as making Building Information Modeling
(BIM), which support the human to become more imaginative in tackle the dilemma.
In this case, it is necessary to emphasize that the construction companies that have
been able to expand creative and innovative lifestyle and techniques also have the
capability to achieve these difficult periods which is an outbreak of COVID-19
pandemic. Thus, creativity and innovation enable construction industries to be
changeable as they amend their working environments and the obstacle that they face
during and after COVID-19 pandemic.

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CHAPTER 2
THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY
According to the data from World Health Organization (WHO), the number of global
cases of COVID-19 have been continuously rising, its impact on the construction
industry is expected to change at this moment and over the coming years. Most of us
have know the COVID-19 pandemic had resulted obstacle for government,
organizations, business and society around the globe in the short and long term such
as drastically impacting the global economy, financial markets the quality of living,
supply chains and so on. As a result, the COVID-19 outbreak not only lead to
negative impact, but also positive impact on construction industry.
2.1 Adoption of construction technology
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many construction industries are required
to reduce the labors work on site and change to work from home environment in
order to maintain social distancing among workers. Based on my research, Malaysian
government reported that only the registered Grade 1 to 4 contractors are empowered
to continue works on construction site, whereas Grade 5 to 7 contractors are allowed
to work from home. In this case, many construction industries develop innovative
ideas to keep the construction projects moving smoothly by evolving digitalization
and automation on the project.
To enhance better and safety working environment for workers, the
contractors are employing variety of digital technologies in building project to
accelerate the production levels such as Building Information Modeling (BIM),
drones and remote-controlled demolition robots. Building Information Modeling
(BIM) has the ability in visualizing the design in a 3D environment and allows the

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clients to go through preconstruction building projects although the clients stay at
home during lockdown. The contractors, engineers and architects also able to use
Building Information Modeling (BIM) to detect and fix the problems before the
projects start which can boosts productivity of a construction industry.
In addition, drone is the useful tool for contractors that can helps to monitor
the situation and the progress work on construction site. Construction industries will
develop drones to reduce the need for site engineers to visit construction sites and
increasing the frequency of spot checking to make sure the site always under quality
control. Also, drones allow access to risky sites for capturing real-time images or
videos of high-risk areas to continue the construction projects on site from day to
night regardless of foul weather, even though there are no workers on site. Thus, the
workers are managed to complete the projects at specific time although the
government has limited the labors on site. With developing new technologies,
construction companies have the competence to prepare for upcoming projects.
Besides, the fatal accident cases are decreased under this Movement Control
Order (MCO) due to the contractors using digital technologies to monitor their job
task and the limitation of labors on site which can enhance the safety of labors on
construction site. It is clearly that COVID-19 pandemic can lead the workers to
safety working environment due to the construction industries strictly enforce the
COVID-19 safety guidelines. Therefore, the construction industry will adapt well to
the changing from manpower to digitalization and automation during and after
COVID-19 pandemic.
2.2 Loss of employment
As far as I am concerned, loss of employment is a major impact during the ongoing
COVID-19 pandemic. According to (Ichniowski, 2020), the construction job loses
because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic have increased to a severe level which
is 975,000 workers lost their job on construction industries. In this case, many
construction industries have to redundancy of employment due to they suffered huge
losses in the financial crisis. The companies unable to cope with the expenses during
lockdown.

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Moreover, the impact of job losses not only had an influence on their live, but
also the global economy. Regarding to the news reported from Malaysian Employers
Federation executive director that job losses has increased will drag the construction
industries in economy to uprise the value chain. Due to the construction projects
have been stagnated, the contractors still need to make payment for the projects that
being terminated and temporary suspension. Also, the construction materials and
machines that used on site also need to pay by the companies even though damaged.
It is obvious that the redundancies of labors will cause the quality of projects and
productivity of construction will be diminished. However, the higher the loss of
employment, the lower the performance of construction industry in existence.
Furthermore, many of the foreign workers being forced to return to their
hometown due to the lockdown during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Based on
my research, many of the foreign workers with low wage are unable to cope with the
settlement of the contracts with the construction companies if they have lost their
jobs. However, many of the foreign workers returned to their hometown were unable
to back again to the construction site after the Movement Control Order (MCO). On
the other hand, there are still many of the foreign workers just stuck at the country
for waiting the lockdown to be elevated. For example, the foreign workers are
hesitant to return their hometown will be unable to return Singapore.
To proof this, the job loses impacted by COVID-19 will also lead to shortage
of labor on site which will continue respond to the economic at this moment and in
the future. It should be noted that loss of employment is connected with global
economy. Strictly speaking that the job losses shown the greatest threat to the global
construction industry, which might lead construction industry face the
socioeconomic crisis during and after COVID-19 pandemic.

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CHAPTER 3
THE IMPLEMENTATION OF CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION ON
CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY DURING AND AFTER COVID-19
PANDEMIC
The World Health Organization (WHO) had announced officially that the
Coronavirus 19 (COVID-19) outbreak as a global pandemic on March 12 of 2020,
and now it is spreading quickly across continents. In just a short time, all of our lives
have changed with a critical impact on our health, businesses and also the economy.
It is also affected our freedom to move, the way we work even study, engage and
also interact with others one. In fact, many other countries have adopted extremely
strict measures to prevent the spreading further of the virus and leading to a huge
economic downturn and the number of the people who are experiencing temporary or
permanent unemployment increasing. In view of this, all of us have been called upon
to adjust to new ways of working or studying, respecting the rules of social isolation,
adapting to a new environment and to make some sacrifices, and as addition, in some
of the cases, developing a new sense of unity and cohesion. During combating the
health emergency, that has already caused a huge number loss of the human lives, the
government and society are also reflecting and acting to deal with the economic and
social consequences that following the COVID-19 pandemic. The crisis caused by
this virus is like no other in our recent history. Based on IMF April World Economic
Outlook 2020, said that the global growth by the end of 2020 will fall to -3
percentage and with deep dives of -7 percentage in Germany and even more serious
situation for Italy which is -9.1 percentage.

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3.1 During COVID-19 pandemic
3.1.1 Digital strategy
Implementation of creativity and innovation is important during COVID-19
pandemic. It can help us undergo this rigorous period. The latest survey released by
EY and found that only 28% of construction and engineering companies have a
successful digital strategy. This is not surprising, due to the construction industry has
historically been slowly adopting new technologies. COVID-19 has changed this. In
the health crisis, the leads of construction industry is forced to think differently about
the way to run their projects to ensure their employees’ safety and health. In response
to the social distancing orders, construction safety software provider which is
Smartvid.io has released a new feature to its AI application called Vinnie. This
application is used to monitor the risks on-site in terms of safety, productivity and
also quality before the COVID-19 pandemic, but now Vinnie will also monitor the
social distancing behaviour on-site. Josh Kanner which is the CEO of Smartvid.io
said that, this new feature uses real-time updates to indicate whether workers are too
close to each other to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Triax Technologies’
Proximity Trace is worn on a safety helmet or lanyard to allow the workers to know
whether they are too close or not. If there has confirmed case of COVID-19, the
company can trace the data captured by the worker's device to identify people who
may be exposed. Social distancing orders have also put pressure on the general
contractors and project managers to restrict personnel on construction sites. As a
result, DJM has increased the availability of 3D scanning services for site
verification. Verifying as-built conditions for a project can take multiple technicians
a few days and it is depending on the site. One technician can map out an entire
construction site in a matter of hours with the help of laser scanner and making it
easier to follow the social distancing guidelines.
Due to COVID-19, the number of team members allowed on site has
decreased, so site managers are also looking for the ways to maximize the
productivity of on-site teams. The construction site management platform, Rickcast
has been offering a free 90-day access to overcome this problem. This platform
shows how skilled tradesmen spend their time on-site, making it easy for leads to see

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their output quantities and also the usage of equipment. Leads can obtain this
information and develop strategies to simplify operations and use their time more
efficiently.
In this extenuating circumstance also brought technological change in the
construction offices. As companies can no longer operate out of their buildings,
many companies enable employees to work from home and actively seek ways to
digitally transform their operations in order to maintain employment for office
employees. Due to the team members in a project can no longer to walk across the
room and discuss their project plans face-to-face, the adoption of software
collaboration tool has been a substantial increase in construction industry. The teams
are using Wrike, Slack and other technologies to connect and using teleconferencing
services such as Zoom and so on. This shift also caused the construction companies
that was bound by paper documents started to introduced to the power of the cloud.
Now, this sector is widely using the tools like Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive
and also Dropbox as well. Those who find it is difficult to work remotely and miss
the office have tried the new ways to keep in touch with their team members.
Services like Sococo and Wurkr allow the team members to work side by side
virtually at home, and even enter into a virtual meeting rooms to hold their meetings.
Since face-to-face meetings can no longer be held, AECOM has found a new mode
of hosting. The infrastructure company has created a new public consultation tool
where stakeholders can use virtual reality, interactive videos and project plan
diagrams to visualize the project. It also allows immediate feedback and questions,
thereby simulating human feelings.
3.1.2 Launched C.U.R.A. project
An Italian architect which is Carlo Ratti and Italo Rota have launched an innovative
and voluntary project that called C.U.R.A. (Connected Units for Respiratory
Ailment). This project involves an international task force composed of designers,
engineers, medical professionals and also military experts work together to build the
capacity of the intensive care unit (ICU). The purpose of this project is to use a
redesigned shipping container to create a plug-in biological protection pod that can
be quickly deployed in cities around the world to quickly respond to the shortage of