Construction Management in the Post Covid Era: Towards Improving Construction Productivity in Developing Countries - Example from Nigeria

Covid-19 has caused a standstill in economies and social life worldwide, which is one of the most unexpected deadly events that remains a global pandemic to date. The construction industry is one of those negatively impacted by Covid-19; it brought unprecedented changes to a number of construction sites globally, which has raised serious concerns within the industry. Prior to the pandemic, the productivity of the construction industry has been unsatisfactory due to a variety of factors especially those related to the workforce. However, the advent of Covid-19 has exacerbated the industry’s vulnerabilities, threatening its overall performance and contribution to the economies of most developing countries. The pandemic’s impact on the construction industry have raised management’s pressure to achieve high productivity levels in most projects where labor productivity improvement is critical. The main objective of this paper is to explore the important factors that influence overall construction productivity in most developing countries, while considering the pandemic’s impact on the construction industry. To achieve that, an extensive literature review was conducted, and about 60 papers were shortlisted with the keywords ‘Covid-19’, ‘Construction Productivity’, ‘Construction industry’, ‘Developing countries’, ‘Construction labor productivity’ ‘Nigeria’, etc., among which studies conducted in most developing countries such as, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, etc., were focused on. Using Nigeria as an example, important factors applicable (but not limited) to Nigeria, were chosen and classified for further review and discussion. Finally, some critical factors were discussed and suggestions for mitigating the impacts they have on the industry were made. The findings and recommendations provided will contribute immensely in related study areas both for present and future research. It will aid researchers and policymakers in most developing countries in understanding the measures required for better management and decisions toward improving construction productivity in current and future construction projects.