Stanford School of Engineering & Doerr School of Sustainability
ENGINEERING Civil & Environmental Engineering
Center for Integrated Facility Engineering

AEC and Pandemic: Response and Impact - May 2020 Update

On the left: Cleaners: a new crew on construction site (Source: iStock). On the right: An Example of physical distancing measures at Dolores Park, San Francisco (Courtesy of Natasa Mrazovic)

Research initiative

The COVID-19 pandemic is bringing considerable changes to AEC. Are we responding adequately? What are short- and long-term impacts?

This website includes a series of monthly reports (April 2020 to March 2021) with identified short- and long-term trends. The monthly reports provide the information about the industry’s response in form of systematization and analysis of observed challenges and solutions specific organizations offer and/or have adopted.

Categorization of the observed issues

Our research in April showed that thinking about the impact of COVID-19 on the AEC industry has rapidly become the most important issue. Given our observation of countless challenges and the response of the industry, in April we grouped the observed issues into 9 overlapping categories (items 1. to 9. listed below): (Advance) planning, Open communication and collaboration, Procedures of shifting workflows, Health and safety of employees, Management of employees in crisis, Adoption of new technologies, Healthcare facilities, Silver lining, and Future predictions.

In May we continued to monitor the developments given the tremendous impact of the pandemic on all aspects of our lives, including AEC, and the dynamic changes. The May report is based on the selected 211 references that appeared between April 21 and May 25, including 43 webinars and 168 publications. Based on the issues observed in May, we slightly extended the 9-category division from April by adding a category “0.” for Global socio-economic, geo-political developments affecting AEC (indirectly), and the most publicized sub-categories (listed below).

The 10 categories with 21 subcategories are listed below, including the links to subpages providing more information about the categories. The references on the category subpages are from the latest published report (May 2020). These references/ links can be found on the References subpage.

The trends, i.e., the representation of the categories in selected references are provided in the table and the diagram below.

Top 5 monthly highlights follow.

The full reports with detailed analysis and systematization of the references can be downloaded below.

The links to the subpages with systematized references are at the bottom of this page. The lists of references allow the reader "a deeper dive" into specific topics.

 

Monthly Trends

May 2020: Top 5 Highlights

  1.  In comparison to the April results, the industry’s interest in (Advance) planning – short- & long-term strategies has increased almost 400% in May, showing the importance of strategies to “survive and thrive”. Although the communication and collaboration were open in almost 100% of references as in April, this category was mentioned in 7.1% of the references only – as if the industry accepted this type of communication as a new normal.
  2.  The category of Procedures of shifting workflows has the highest total representation of 51.8% in the references in comparison to other categories. This shows that the industry continues to provide its service no matter the cancellations and delays, reported shortage of labor, tensions on construction site, reported decrease of backlogs, and reported slowdowns in design / engineering teams due to WFH and virtual communications.
  3. The Health and safety (H&S) issues have been discussed less in May (27.4% vs. 66% in April) because the organizations have implemented the H&S guidelines as they were rolled out in March/ April. May is marked by the increase of mental health issues due to quarantines and economic downturn. Hence, the interest in Management of employees in crisis has increased 60%.
  4. The discussion about the Adoption of new technologies seems to decrease in May due to emergence of two new categories with high interest: Buildings & cities design for the next normal and  Global socio-economic, geo-political developments affecting AEC (indirectly). The adoption of new technologies was only mentioned as a mandatory step forward in April, while May has brought specialized publications and webinars showing that the industry is starting to learn how to implement “new” technologies. Topic-specific publications allowed us to add subcategories listed above.
  5. The discussion about Buildings and cities design in the pandemic and for a next normal was in more than a third of the references. “Silver lining” dropped from 80% in April to 21.4% in May showing that in May the AEC community is still optimistic about the future but cautious and focused on short- and long-term strategies to survive. The discussion about future with predictions increased almost 300%.

April 2020: Top 5 Highlights

  1. All selected references are publicly available and free showing that the industry understands the importance of working together to survive the crisis. The expression “We are all in this together” came up in almost all webinars/ interviews. All participants openly communicate (100%) challenges, methods, success stories, and opportunities, mostly filled with optimism and empathy showing the understanding of “silver lining” in the crisis (80%).
  2. The majority (2/3) of the references addresses procedures of shifting workflows in pandemic and health and safety of employees, because the industry is focused on current projects; continuing business while keeping the workforce safe.
  3.  40% of references highlights the impact of adoption of online communication and collaboration technologies, and all agree that the future lies in high-tech (automation, robotics, virtual workflows, new hands-free sensor technologies especially in healthcare).
  4. Advance planning and management of employees in crisis were mentioned in 10% of references only, leaving some questions open such as how many businesses were ready for the pandemic (i.e., had a business continuity plan (BCP) before the crisis) and how the managers are keeping the workforce engaged in a new environment after the initial shock and the transition period. After this crisis, certainly every AEC business will have a BCP.
  5. Future predictions came up in approx. 15% of the documents, mostly specialized articles, showing that in the first phase of the pandemic everybody was busy with the transition/ survival.

AEC and Pandemic: Response and Impact - All Updates

April 2020 PDF • May 2020 Update PDF References
June 2020 Update PDF References • July 2020 Update PDF References
August 2020 Update PDF References • September 2020 Update PDF References
December 2020 Update PDF References • March 2021 Update PDF References
June 2021 Update PDF References

Research Team

Lead Researcher: Natasa Mrazovic
Prinicipal Investigator: Martin Fischer
Website: Junwen Zheng, Marc Ramsey, Andrew Peterman
Comments or Questions: cife-aec-pandemic-research@stanford.edu