Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has made the world face a whole new reality, and the measures taken for slowing the spread of the disease included social distancing, as well as national, regional, or local lockdowns and restrictions regarding the movement of people. For such an important sector of the Romanian economy as the construction industry, the restrictive measures imposed by the authorities led to postponing, delaying, or stopping the current projects. This paper aims at investigating the main effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Romanian construction sector, as well as the role of the digitalization process in mitigating the negative impact on the companies activating in this domain, in the context of the current levels of use of information technologies. The research involved the use of qualitative (exploratory in-depth interviews) and quantitative (online surveys applied to members of the local building sector, such as engineers, architects, contractors, and managers) data collection methods, respectively descriptive statistics for data categorization and interpretation. In general, the Romanian construction sector was only slightly affected, with the most significant negative effects being the delays and cost overrun due to safety and health issues. This paper is one of the first studies to explore and assess the effects of COVID-19 on the Romanian construction industry and the role of digitalization in reducing the pandemic impact. The main findings reveal that the companies in this industry that have a high digitalization degree overpassed in a smoother manner the current pandemic situation.
Highlights
The construction industry holds a key role in the economy of the European Union (EU), being one of the sectors that can provide clear solutions when it comes to any social, energetic, or climatic changes
The year 2019 was one with positive outcomes for the whole EU construction sector, which recorded a substantial expansion in terms of investments, but it marked the appearance of the new Coronavirus in Wuhan City in China [2]
The aim of this paper is to investigate the main effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Romanian construction sector, as well as the role of the digitalization process in mitigating the negative impact on the companies activating in this domain, in the context of the current level of use of the information technologies
Summary
The construction industry holds a key role in the economy of the European Union (EU), being one of the sectors that can provide clear solutions when it comes to any social, energetic, or climatic changes. The actions taken for reducing the spreading of the virus exert a huge impact on the European economy, and the consequences of these measures have started to appear, many states facing either recession or decline in their economic activities. The Romanian and the European construction sectors do not make an exception when it comes to bearing these consequences, and a decline in the work volume of the industry, accompanied by a sinking of the level of investment, may be expected [4]
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