Diagnosis of labor cost variation at residential buildings during the COVID-19 pandemic

In the last year, the COVID-19 pandemic has been affecting the construction sector worldwide in all its activities, both public and private, due to an increase in the budget initially planned for each project due to the incidence of different factors. This is clearly evidenced in the situation presented in Peru, where on March 16, 2020, the government ordered a mandatory social lockout, which in turn disabled the activity of all economic sectors. This stoppage lasted about four months, therefore the resumption of activities in the projects generated an alteration of costs as a result of the effects on productivity, the implementation of -PPE-Personal Protective Equipment according to the guidelines established by the Peruvian Government through Ministerial Resolution No. 448-2020-MINSA; and the variation in the costs of resources. In this context, the present research aims to diagnose the variation of labor costs in the construction of buildings, which allows updating the cost of man hours according to the reduction of performance and the implementation of PPE according to the guidelines established by law. These results show a percentage increase in budgets due to COVID-19 considerations.