Challenging of Industrialized Building System (IBS) in construction process during COVID-19 in Malaysia / Alyani Izzati Mohd Zainal

It is widely known that a dangerous infectious disease known as COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on all corners of the globe. Malaysia is another country that is battling the spread of the disease. Every individual and sector has had a new experience as a result of the disease in their daily lives. The Industrialized Building System (IBS) construction sector is also affected in this situation. There are several problems faced by IBS contractors during this pandemic such as project delay, difficulty in communicating between teams, many standard operating procedures (SOPs) that need to be followed to curb the release of COVID-19 on site where this will slow down work on site and so on. The objective of this research is to explore the challenges faced by contractors involved in IBS construction during the pandemic and to suggest the best possible factors that affect IBS System in construction process during COVID-19. This study uses qualitative and quantitative methods. The qualitative method was conducted in a virtual interview with two respondents, which is contractors from different companies and the quantitative method was conducted through the distribution of questionnaires to Email, WhatsApp and Facebook in the form. Through the findings of the study, out of 9 factors asked, only 7 factors are critical during this pandemic season, which is limited IBS production results in additional operational costs to suppliers and recipients, communication between stakeholders (manufacturers, contractors, architecture, developers etc.), problems acceptance of different individual understandings, some individuals are less committed, transportation is critical issues affecting supply chain, the limited number of employees and time has resulted in limited delivery of products to the site and several conditions need to be met for cross -state. Since most of the respondents agreed that the use of IBS helps in curbing the transmission of COVID-19 at the site, several recommendations have been proposed in this research to encourage the use of IBS during a pandemic.