Track: Modeling and Simulation

Abstract

This paper aims to develop a systematic review on the contractual challenges faced by the construction industry in a pandemic situation. The construction industry and its stakeholders had never experienced a pandemic such as COVID 19 after the Spanish flu in the 1920s. Hence, many disputes are evolving within the construction industry based on contractual provisions. For the Systematic Literature Review (SLR), the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews (PRISMA) statement was used as a formal systematic review guideline. Data were obtained through articles from the year 2020 to 2022. The analysis includes 20 articles filtered using 328 articles from Emerald, Science Direct, and Scopus databases. The study only reviewed the contractual challenges and indicated 15 contractual challenges strongly connected with project cost and time escalation. Disruption in project works, issues in the supply chain, labour shortage and productivity loss, delay payments, and nine others were recognised via Systematic Literature Review as the main contractual challenges the industry encounters during a pandemic. Furthermore, future researchers are encouraged to investigate proper solutions to minimise the destructive impacts of the respective issues to the construction stakeholders.