3.3
Project Schedule Overrun
Project Manager whom responsible to ensuring the projects are on time, on budget and within
scope are greatly impacted by Covid-19 especially due implementation of Movement Control
Order (MCO). Despite the outcomes of many stages implemented which each having different
degree of order, it does not minimize the impact of Covid-19 toward construction project due
to the unique characteristic of construction industry where all are correlated to each other. As
for Malaysia, the government has halted all construction progress within MCO phase 1 to
phase 3 (Esa et al., 2020). Majority of construction projects which had reached the
construction stages when the MCO commenced are currently behind schedule. Usually under
normal circumstance, project crashing and fast-tracking strategies can be used to compress
project schedule activities in order to meet the overall project timeframes. Project crashing
refers to an allocation of extra resources such as personnel and machinery to shorten the
project schedule (Ballesteros-Perez et al., 2019). It is usually accomplished in the construction
industry by increasing the workforce. On the other hand, project fast-tracking translates to
parallel or simultaneous execution of project activities, which would previously have been
executed sequentially to compress the project schedule, and applies to activities that can be
overlapped (Feylizadeh et al., 2018). Project fast-tracking, like project crashing, will
necessitate more workers on site to complete various project operations. However, both
project crashing and fast-tracking approaches currently in use are in violation of COVID-19
disaster management standards related to occupational health and safety, such as social
distancing and curfew requirements. As a result, construction project managers have few, if
any, or no, options for dealing with the severe consequences of project schedule overruns (Mr
Moses Nyathi, 2020).
3.4
Adjustment of project life cycle
In general, a project life cycle consists of four major stages: project initiation, planning,
execution and closure (Frimpong & Oluwoye, 2018). Project initiation is a stage where the
budget, scope, timeframe, successful and critical criteria are being evaluated for approval.
This is followed by project planning which comprises a comprehensive refined project budget,
schedule, risks, scope and any other important project feature requirements. Subsequently,
the project is put out to tender, followed by project construction, which comprises putting the
project plan into action. Project closure, or the completion of construction, is the final stage of
the project life cycle. Following the Covid-19 outbreak, updating the project risk management
is needed. There’s is a need to do re-examining the overall effects of Covid-19 regulations on
all project stages. In order to incorporate with the current Covid-19 regulations, the project
manager had to do adjustment to the project life cycle depending on the current stages of the
project. Employees in all construction projects are at a high risk of catching COVID-19, based
on the aforementioned project life cycle stages. On the other hand, completed project at the
closure stages pose the least amount of infection risk. The project plan may need to be
changed for projects that are already in the construction stage, taking into account the required
person-hours, money, and social distancing regulations.
REFERENCES
1. Esa, M. B., Ibrahim, F. S., & Kamal, E. B. (2020). Covid-19 Pandemic Lockdown: The
Consequences Towards Project Success in Malaysian Construction Industry.
Advances in Science, Technology and Engineering Systems Journal, 5(5), 973–983.
https://doi.org/10.25046/aj0505119
2. Ballesteros-Perez, P., Elamrousy, K. M., & González-Cruz, M. C. (2019). Nonlinear
time-cost trade-off models of activity crashing: Application to construction scheduling
and project compression with fasttracking. Automation in Construction, 97, 229-240.
3. Feylizadeh, M. R., Mahmoudi, A., Bagherpour, M., & Li, D. F. (2018). Project crashing
using a fuzzy multi-objective model considering time, cost, quality and risk under fast
tracking technique: A case study. Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, 35(3), 36153631.
4. Frimpong, Y., & Oluwoye, J. (2018). Project management practice in groundwater
construction project in Ghana. American Journal of Management Science and
Engineering, 3(5), 60-68.
5. Mr Moses Nyathi, D. S. T. and P. C. G. P. (2020). The Impact of COVID-19 on Project
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https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.30407.11686
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