Building up Resilience of Construction Sector SMEs and Their Supply Chains to Extreme Weather Events

Wider scientific community now accept that the threat of climate change as real and thus acknowledge the importance of implementing adaptation measures in a global context. In the UK, the physical effects of climate change are likely to be directly felt in the form of extreme weather events, which are predicted to escalate in number and severity in future under the changing climatic conditions. Construction industry; which consists of supply chains running across various other industries, economies and regions, will also be affected due to these events. Thus, it is important that the construction organisations are well prepared to withstand the effects of extreme weather events not only directly affecting their organisations but also affecting their supply chains which in turn might affect the organisation in concern. Given the fact that more than 99% of construction sector businesses are SMEs, they have to be paid special attention especially due to their inherent characteristics such as resource constraints etc. This paper presents the initial stage of a PhD research study undertaken to address the issue of extreme weather resilience of construction sector SMEs and their supply chains. The paper aims to identify the importance of being resilient to the effects of extreme weather events in a wider supply chain context. It attempts to identify the likely effects of extreme weather events on construction industry supply chains, and their consequences by reviewing the current literature. The paper also briefly reviews the drivers/barriers for implementing resilience measures to these issues in construction supply chains, especially considering the dominance of SMEs within the industry sector. Future directions of the PhD study will also be presented. Paper concludes by highlighting the importance of improving the coping capacity of construction sector SMEs and their supply chains to the effects of extreme weather.