COVID-19 in the Construction Sector

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The entry has covered most information I know that is related to the topics.

I am not sure about the theme of Section 6. The section seems to cover a lot of information and has a subtitle that is very similar to the title of the whole entry. Should it be separated into multiple sections?

It looks like more proofreading is necessary. In Line 114, "was" and "is" should be replaced by "were" and "are". In Line 314, it is mentioned that there are three groups, but only two of the groups are introduced in this section. In Line 390, two paragraphs are duplicated. 

Author Response

The errors indicated in the last paragraph are corrected in the new version.

Section 6 was included in accordance with the requirements of another reviewer. He missed analyzing the impact of COVID19 on the sector, not only at the health level (three initial paragraphs), but especially at the economic level (from the fourth paragraph).

Kind regards

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you to the authors for improving their article according to the reviewers' comments. 

Author Response

Thank you for your review.
I attach new updated version.

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript is well structured and well written. It presents the ideas in an appropriate and understandable way. The introduction addresses the key concepts, moving from the general to the particular. The methodology is adequate and explained in detail. However, in order to publish this manuscript, I think it would be necessary to consider the following comment.

The author is encouraged to detail the specific legislation for the construction sector during the pandemic period and to analyse how this has influenced the different jobs.

Author Response

There has been no specific legislation for the construction sector during pandemic. All the legislation was generic to adopt extraordinary & urgent measures to face the economic and social impact of COVID19, for all essential work as a many governments considered construction to be (line 9-10). Laboral authorities only published guidelines, not mandatory recommendations, referring to the general regulations.

Kind regards

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for your revision.

Reviewer 3 Report

The author has addressed the comments raised by the reviewers. 

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In this paper, the author analyzes the influence of COVID-19 in the construction sector in a theoretical manner.

I suggest some improvements for it to be accepted for publication:

• It is highly recommended to improve the motivation in the Introduction section
• It is highly recommended to include the explanation of the methodology in the Introduction section.
• Since the beginning of the pandemic, different measures have been implemented that directly or indirectly affected this sector. An analysis of these measures would be advisable.
• Finally, I believe that the conclusions should be revised in order to show the most accurate work results.

Reviewer 2 Report

The article is interesting and relevant to the field.

For achievement of the better quality of the article I suggest for authors to make the following improvements:

1. The affiliation of the author should be expanded adding the department
2. Instead of Definition, should be Abstract
3. In the Abstract section should be added a short explanation of the results of the article.
4. Section 3 should be added to other sections because it is too short and it can not reflect all the article (the title of section 3 is almost the same as of all article)
5. The literature list should be expanded (only 17 references are cited in the text)
6. It is not clear what is the novelty of the article. It should be underlined in the text and conclusion section

Reviewer 3 Report

The entry summarizes the influence of COVID 19 in the construction sector. The author analyzes why minimizing the spread of virus for construction workers is difficult, summarizes how to evaluate the exposure risk degrees for construction work tasks, and provides the protection requirements for different exposure risk degrees. 

The authors focus on discussing the impact of COVID-19 related to enhancing safety and reducing health risks. However, the author does not discuss the economic impact of COVID-19, including suspended construction projects, financial recession, and unemployment in the construction sector. The topic has been discussed in [1-4].

It looks like some references are not properly cited in Line 99-131 and Line 211-232. 

The author might need to better proofread the entry. In Line 44-46, one sentence is repeated. In Line 55-56,  the sentence "to eliminate them, or if this is not possible, eliminate them" does not make sense. 

References
[1] Biswas, Ankan, Abhinandan Ghosh, Adrish Kar, Tuhin Mondal, Buntee Ghosh, and Prasanta Kumar Bardhan. "The impact of COVID-19 in the construction sector and its remedial measures." In Journal of Physics: Conference Series, vol. 1797, no. 1, p. 012054. IOP Publishing, 2021.
[2] Alsharef, Abdullah, Siddharth Banerjee, S. M. Uddin, Alex Albert, and Edward Jaselskis. "Early impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the United States construction industry." International journal of environmental research and public health 18, no. 4 (2021): 1559.
[3] Gan, Wee Hoe, and David Koh. "COVID-19 and return-to-work for the construction sector: lessons from Singapore." Safety and health at work 12, no. 2 (2021): 277-281.
[4] Ogunnusi, Mercy, Mansur Hamma-Adama, Huda Salman, and Tahar Kouider. "COVID-19 pandemic: the effects and prospects in the construction industry." International journal of real estate studies 14, no. Special Issue 2 (2020).