Nayrouz News Agency : The Jordan Engineers Association (JEA), in cooperation with the Allied Law Firm, on Wednesday held a virtual interactive dialogue session on legal and technical issues related to the sector.

The coronavirus pandemic has created a "new culture" among contractors when applying for permits, signing contracts and carrying out any activity related to their scope of work,  Director General of Afra for Engineering Services Ihsan Abuzaitoon said.

"There needs to be clear guidance on how to continue with the construction projects during and after the outbreak,” Abuzaitoon said during the session, which was hosted on the video conferencing platform Zoom and streamed live on the JEA's and the firm's Facebook pages.

Abuzaitoon stressed the need for considering the continuation of certain projects during the lockdown to minimise losses and damages caused by the crisis.

"At this point we need to think outside the box," said Haya Saleh, director general of MESC Construction Management.

Both the contractors and the owners or clients want to sustain work, she added.

The director general noted that construction projects have been halted because of the pandemic and the difficulty of obtaining permits to access the construction sites.

"Estimates on the losses of both the contractor and the client need to be provided," she said.

Jawdat Yaghmour, director general of Associated Consulting Engineers Int'l, Amman, said that strategic construction projects have resumed work under strict health measures, including the Desert Highway construction and the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project.

The director general added that the impact of the pandemic on the sector would have been "much less” if the construction sites had been granted permission to continue their work in a steady stream by utilising a minimum number of workers and following social distancing and health protocols.

"This is an exceptional and unexpected situation," Firas Ghizlan, general director of the Law and Arbitration Centre, said during the session.

At some point, he noted, contractors "will not be able to pay wages to their employees”, especially as institutions and companies were already suffering from the difficult economic situation in the Kingdom before the pandemic.

Ahmad Tahboub, CEO of Allied Law Firm, highlighted the continuous changes witnessed during the outbreak and the need to consider the interests and capacities of all moving forward.