The COVID-19 pandemic has been the largest global health crisis in decades. Apart from the unprecedented number of deaths and hospitalizations, the pandemic has resulted in economic slowdowns, widespread business disruptions, and significant hardships. This study focused on investigating the early impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the U.S. construction industry since the declaration of the national emergency on 13 March 2020. The study objectives were achieved through 34 telephone interviews with project managers, engineers, designers, and superintendents that represented different states and distinct industry sectors in the United States (U.S.). The interviewees offered information on their experience with the pandemic, including the general and adverse effects experienced, new opportunities created, and risk management efforts being undertaken. The reported adverse effects included significant delays on projects, inability to secure materials on time, reduction in productivity rates, material price escalations, and others. The new opportunities that were created included projects involving the fast-track construction of medical facilities, construction of residential buildings, transportation-related work, and opportunities to recruit skilled workers. The risk management measures that were widely adopted included measures to enhance safety and reduce other project risks. The safety measures adopted included requiring employees to wear cloth face masks, adoption of social distancing protocols, staggering of construction operations, offering COVID-19-related training, administering temperature checks prior to entry into the workplace, and others. Measures to manage other project risks included the formation of a task force team to review the evolving pandemic and offer recommendations, advocating that construction businesses be deemed essential to combat delays and taking advantage of government relief programs. The study findings will be useful to industry stakeholders interested in understanding the early impacts of the pandemic on the construction industry. Industry stakeholders may also build upon the reported findings and establish best practices for continued safe and productive operations.

Proper hazard recognition is fundamental to effective safety management in construction workplaces. Nevertheless, poor hazard recognition levels are a widespread and persistent problem in the construction industry. For example, recent investigations have demonstrated that a significant number of workplace hazards often remain unrecognized in construction workplaces. These unrecognized workplace hazards often remain unmanaged and can potentially translate into devastating and unexpected safety incidents. Therefore, interventions targeted at improving hazard recognition levels are foundational to enhancing safety management in construction workplaces. The main objective of the current investigation was to examine if ChatGPT, a language model recently launched by OpenAI, can aid hazard recognition when integrated into the curriculum of students pursuing a career in the construction industry. The investigation was carried out as an experimental effort with 42 students enrolled in the construction program at a major state university in the United States. First, prior to the introduction of ChatGPT as an intervention, the pre-intervention hazard recognition ability of the students was measured. Next, ChatGPT and its capabilities were introduced to the students in a classroom setting. Guidance was also offered on how the students could leverage ChatGPT to aid hazard recognition efforts. Finally, the post-intervention hazard recognition ability of the students was measured and compared against their earlier performance. The result suggests that ChatGPT can be leveraged to improve hazard recognition levels. Accordingly, integrating ChatGPT as part of safety education and training can yield benefits and prepare the next generation of construction professionals for industry success.

Construction workers fail to recognize a large number of safety hazards. These unrecognized safety hazards can lead to unintended hazard exposure and tragic safety incidents. Unfortunately, traditional hazard recognition interventions (e.g., job hazard analyses and safety training) have been unable to tackle the industry-wide problem of poor hazard recognition levels. In fact, emerging evidence has demonstrated that traditional hazard recognition interventions have been designed without a proper understanding of the challenges workers experience during hazard recognition efforts. Interventions and industry-wide efforts designed based on a more thorough understanding of these challenges can yield substantial benefits—including superior hazard recognition levels and lower injury rates. Towards achieving this goal, the current investigation focused on identifying hazard categories that workers are more proficient in recognizing and others that they are less proficient in recognizing (i.e., hazard recognition patterns). For the purpose of the current study, hazards were classified on the basis of the energy source per Haddon’s energy release theory (e.g., gravity, motion, electrical, chemical, etc.). As part of the study, 287 workers representing 57 construction workplaces in the United States were engaged in a hazard recognition activity. Apart from confirming previous research findings that workers fail to recognize a disproportionate number of safety hazards, the results demonstrate that the workers are more proficient in recognizing certain hazard types. More specifically, the workers on average recognized roughly 47% of the safety hazards in the gravity, electrical, motion, and temperature hazard categories while only recognizing less than 10% of the hazards in the pressure, chemical, and radiation hazard categories. These findings can inform the development of more robust interventions and industry-wide initiatives to tackle the issue of poor hazard recognition levels in the construction industry.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been the largest global crisis in recent decades. Apart from the countless deaths and health emergencies, the pandemic has disrupted several industries—including construction. For example, a significant number of construction projects have been interrupted, delayed, and even abandoned. In such emergencies, information gathering and dissemination are vital for effective crisis management. The role of social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, as information sources, in these contexts has received much attention. The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate if YouTube can serve as a useful source of information for the construction industry in emergency situations—such as during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The assessment was undertaken by distilling the coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic as it relates to the construction industry from the content shared via YouTube by leveraging Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modelling. The investigation also compared the timeline with which relevant content was shared via YouTube and peer-reviewed research articles to make relative assessments. The findings suggest that YouTube offered significant and relevant coverage across six topics that include health and safety challenges, ongoing construction operation updates, workforce-related challenges, industry operations-related guidelines and advocacy, and others. Moreover, compared to the coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in the research literature, YouTube offered more comprehensive and timely coverage of the pandemic as it relates to the construction industry. Accordingly, industry stakeholders may leverage YouTube as a valuable and largely untapped resource to aid in combating similar emergency situations.

Construction Hazard Prevention through Design (CHPtD) is recognized as a pivotal strategy for enhancing workplace safety. Despite its theoretical potential, practical implementation faces challenges, particularly regarding designers' familiarity with field-level operations and hazard recognition. This study aims to investigate whether ChatGPT can address these challenges by assisting in hazard recognition during CHPtD sessions. The research utilized a randomized controlled experiment to assess ChatGPT as an intervention in supporting hazard recognition during CHPtD sessions. The study involves 162 civil and construction engineering student participants, representing future professionals. Participants engaged in hazard recognition during CHPtD sessions either with or without the assistance of ChatGPT. Participants who utilized ChatGPT during CHPtD sessions demonstrated a significant improvement in hazard recognition, identifying approximately 40% more hazards compared to those who did not use ChatGPT. These findings underscore the efficacy of ChatGPT in supporting CHPtD efforts. The results highlight the practical utility of harnessing ChatGPT in CHPtD sessions to enhance hazard recognition and ultimately promote workplace safety. By leveraging ChatGPT, designers and engineers can better anticipate and mitigate potential hazards during the design phase, thus creating a safer working environment for field workers. This research contributes to addressing the challenges associated with implementing CHPtD by introducing ChatGPT as a valuable tool to support hazard recognition. By demonstrating the effectiveness of ChatGPT in enhancing hazard identification during CHPtD sessions, this study offers a novel approach to promoting the adoption of CHPtD and advancing workplace safety initiatives.