For the past couple of months, the Coronavirus situation in Malaysia looked to be quite stable but now with one large spike a couple of weeks ago we’re not so sure anymore. Why are we talking about COVID-19 as a construction company you ask? Well, believe it or not, IBS construction can help to reduce the risk and spread of COVID-19.

As we all know, COVID-19 spreads when the SARS-CoV-2 virus gets transferred between human beings. Thus, to slow the spread of this virus in the construction industry, the logical solution is to have fewer workers. As we have mentioned in our previous post, this is one of the benefits of utilising IBS solutions.

With fewer workers on any given job site, there will be a higher level of social distancing. In addition to this, it will be easier to track fewer workers on the site as well thus making the monitoring part of this much easier as well.

Of course, even though fewer workers are needed on an IBS construction project, they do need to be trained workers. According to an article by The Edge Markets, “IBS can help the property development and construction industries but training is needed.” This is why, out of the MYR 70 million CIDB has allocated to help the construction industry impacted by COVID-19, a portion of it is dedicated to helping local contractors switch to IBS.

The Senior Minister for Infrastructure Development and Minister of Works Dato’ Sri Fadillah bin Yusof also mentions that there will be more training programmes to help industry players in the use of technology in construction; and also train the local construction personnel and the youth so we can reduce our dependency on foreign labour.

Additional benefits of IBS in the time of COVID-19 also includes its speed and relative affordability in constructing buildings. Remember that hospital that the Chinese government built in Wuhan? The one that had about 1,000 beds and was built in just eight days. That was built using pre-fab technology as well.