THE demand reduction and the suspension of activities are the main factors contributing to the negative effects of the new coronavirus crisis on business, according to research by the Brazilian Institute of Economics (Ibre/FGV).
However, one of the essential segments that did not completely stop operations was the one of civil construction. With approximately 2 million workers with formal employment contracts, the sector only had occasional interruptions in some of its activities.
THE pandemic slowed down the accelerated pace that the sector had been experiencing at the beginning of 2020 and forced companies in the sector to undergo adaptations.
The entire production chain was impacted and the first available sectoral indicators already show significant drops in sales of cement and ceramic coatings, in the launch of apartments, in the contracting of financing and many others, even with the construction sites and the stores building materials operating in most of the country.
The speed of events makes it difficult to fully understand their impacts, but there are signs that they will influence new products and construction processes..
The home office was efficient and will impact the need for office buildings and intensify the demand for dedicated workspaces in homes.
In engineering education, in turn, the impacts can already be considered certain and transformative. Social distancing has consolidated distance learning and exposed the need for improvement of computational tools used in educational institutions. Simply virtualizing the classroom has not proven sufficient to impart the necessary skills to new professionals in the sector. This requires the development of new didactics and teaching methods that transfer knowledge into practice.
Given all this, we can see that the crisis The coronavirus has already impacted and will continue to impact lives, businesses and the economy around the world.But, like other pandemics, this negative period will pass.
Sources: G1, Reporter Brazil and Estadão.
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