COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Effects on the Usage of Information Technologies in the Construction Industry: The Case of Romania.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the world face a whole new reality, and the measures taken for slowing the spread of the disease included social distancing, as well as national, regional, or local lockdowns and restrictions regarding the movement of people. For such an important sector of the Romanian economy as the construction industry, the restrictive measures imposed by the authorities led to postponing, delaying, or stopping the current projects. This paper aims at investigating the main effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Romanian construction sector, as well as the role of the digitalization process in mitigating the negative impact on the companies activating in this domain, in the context of the current levels of use of information technologies. The research involved the use of qualitative (exploratory in-depth interviews) and quantitative (online surveys applied to members of the local building sector, such as engineers, architects, contractors, and managers) data collection methods, respectively descriptive statistics for data categorization and interpretation. In general, the Romanian construction sector was only slightly affected, with the most significant negative effects being the delays and cost overrun due to safety and health issues. This paper is one of the first studies to explore and assess the effects of COVID-19 on the Romanian construction industry and the role of digitalization in reducing the pandemic impact. The main findings reveal that the companies in this industry that have a high digitalization degree overpassed in a smoother manner the current pandemic situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]