Our Risk Management Perspective
Six years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is reasonable to ask whether its effects on construction projects—and the risks faced by architects and engineers—have finally dissipated.
The most visible signs of the pandemic are largely behind us. Jobsite shutdowns, occupancy restrictions, emergency protocols, and many of the extraordinary measures adopted during 2020 and 2021 have faded from day-to-day project operations. Yet the risks created or intensified during that period have not disappeared.
Instead, they have evolved.
From a risk management perspective, COVID-19 should no longer be viewed simply as a discrete historical event. The pandemic acted as a risk accelerant, exposing and intensifying vulnerabilities that already existed across the construction industry—including labor availability, supply chains, project delivery, scheduling, and contract administration.
Many of those conditions remain active drivers of project disputes and professional liability claims today.
Lingering Labor Constraints and Experience Gaps
One of the most persistent post-pandemic impacts on construction projects is the availability and experience of skilled labor.
The industry has not fully recovered from workforce disruptions that accelerated during the pandemic. Early retirements, career changes, workforce exits, and reduced entry into skilled trades have contributed to tighter labor markets. At the same time, projects have become increasingly complex, while owners and contractors continue to face significant schedule and budget pressures.
The result is greater reliance on less experienced personnel in environments where experience and oversight are particularly important.
From a professional liability standpoint, labor shortages and experience gaps can increase exposure through changes in sequencing, rework, coordination challenges, and schedule compression. Less experienced field personnel may be more likely to misinterpret drawings, overlook constructability concerns, or fail to identify inconsistencies before they become larger problems.
The issue is not simply whether an individual makes an error. It is whether the project has sufficient experienced oversight and effective communication to identify and correct that error before it escalates into a claim.
Supply Chain Volatility as an Ongoing Risk Factor
Global supply chains have stabilized considerably compared with the most disruptive periods of the pandemic. However, material availability, pricing volatility, transportation challenges, and geopolitical pressures continue to affect construction projects.
For design professionals, supply-chain instability creates risk well beyond the simple question of whether a particular product is available.
Material shortages and delays can lead to substitutions, changes in specifications, delayed approvals, redesign, and last-minute decisions. Each transition creates opportunities for misunderstandings about who is responsible for evaluating, approving, documenting, and implementing the change.
Importantly, claims do not necessarily arise because a substitution was made. They often arise because the substitution process was poorly documented or because its downstream consequences were not adequately evaluated.
Clear documentation, defined responsibilities, and disciplined review processes therefore remain critical when project teams are forced to make material changes under time or cost pressure.
Compressed Schedules and Deferred Risk
Another lasting consequence of the pandemic is the pressure to recover lost time.
Projects that experienced delays during the pandemic have, in many cases, continued under accelerated or compressed schedules designed to regain lost time. Even projects that began after the acute phase of COVID-19 may operate in an environment shaped by the industry’s ongoing emphasis on speed, efficiency, and schedule recovery.
Schedule acceleration can reduce opportunities for coordination, peer review, site observation, and deliberate decision-making.
That creates professional liability exposure.
Time pressure can encourage project teams to rely on assumptions, accept incomplete information, or defer decisions that would ordinarily receive more careful analysis. Design changes may be made quickly to keep construction moving, while coordination activities are compressed or performed after decisions have effectively been made in the field.
In our experience, schedule pressure rarely creates risk by itself. Rather, it amplifies existing weaknesses in communication, documentation, coordination, and quality control.
Contractual and Claims Implications
The legal and contractual landscape has also evolved.
COVID-specific force majeure arguments are less prominent today than they were during the height of the pandemic. Nevertheless, disputes can still arise from pandemic-era disruptions that affected project scope, sequencing, cost, procurement, and completion.
One challenge is that the documentation surrounding those decisions may be incomplete.
During the early stages of the pandemic, project teams frequently made decisions quickly and under extraordinary circumstances. Conversations occurred by phone or informal email. Approvals were sometimes given verbally. Responsibilities shifted as circumstances changed.
Years later, those decisions may become relevant to a claim, but the individuals involved may have moved on, memories may have faded, and the supporting documentation may be difficult to locate.
For design professionals, this underscores an important risk management principle: documentation created today may become the evidence used to explain a decision years from now.
Risk Management Takeaways for Design Professionals
Six years later, COVID-19 is no longer an excuse for project problems—but it remains an important contextual risk factor.
Architects and engineers should continue to approach today’s projects with an awareness of the structural conditions the pandemic helped create or accelerate.
Key risk management considerations include:
- Expect continued labor constraints and experience gaps. Make sure critical design and construction decisions receive appropriate levels of experienced review and oversight.
- Anticipate material substitutions and supply-driven design changes. Establish clear procedures for reviewing, documenting, and approving substitutions and evaluating their potential downstream impacts.
- Maintain disciplined QA/QC and peer review. Schedule pressure should not eliminate the review processes designed to identify errors and omissions before they become claims.
- Avoid undocumented approvals and informal decision-making. Important project decisions should be documented clearly, including who made the decision, why it was made, and what information was considered.
- Recognize that pandemic-era decisions may still surface in claims. Preserve relevant project records and understand that decisions made years ago may ultimately become part of today’s claim history.
Looking Ahead
The construction industry has moved well beyond the emergency phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. But moving beyond the pandemic does not mean returning to the risk environment that existed before it.
COVID-19 accelerated changes in how projects are staffed, procured, scheduled, coordinated, and delivered. Some of those changes have become permanent features of the construction landscape.
For design professionals, the most important lesson may be that the pandemic did not create every risk the industry faces today. Instead, it exposed, accelerated, and amplified risks that were already present.
Labor shortages, supply-chain uncertainty, compressed schedules, evolving project delivery methods, and documentation challenges can interact in ways that increase both the frequency and severity of professional liability claims.
Bottom Line
Six years later, COVID-19 may no longer be at the center of construction risk—but its effects continue to influence the conditions under which projects are designed and built.
Treating the pandemic as a catalyst for enduring risk conditions, rather than simply a historical event, provides a more useful framework for today’s design professionals.
The goal is not to blame current project challenges on COVID-19. It is to recognize how the pandemic changed the risk environment and apply those lessons to today’s projects.
For architects and engineers, disciplined documentation, meaningful QA/QC, experienced oversight, thoughtful coordination, and clear communication remain among the most effective tools for managing that exposure—and for protecting both project outcomes and professional insurability.
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