Proceedings of International Structural Engineering and Construction, 9(2), 2022 Achieving Technical Excellence with Data Analytics in Materials, Structural Engineering and Construction Edited by Vimonsatit, S., Askarinejad, H., Singh, A., and Yazdani, S. Copyright © 2022 ISEC Press ISSN: 2644-108X www.doi.org/10.14455/ISEC.2022.9(2).CPM-03 CPM-03-1 ESCALATION OF PROJECT COST DUE TO COVID-19 PANDEMIC SITI RASHIDAH MOHD NASIR, MOHAMAAD AIMY SHAHRIL MOHD ALI, SULAIMAN HASIM, and MUHD SALMIZI JAAFAR School of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia The construction sector is known as a major contributor to the overall development and expansion of the country's economy and any delay in a project may cause a cascading effect on the country's economy. In 2020, most countries have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic that had a significant impact on construction projects resulting in project delays and project cost overruns. This paper identifies factors that influence the project cost escalation due COVID-19 pandemic and studies the escalation of main construction materials. Questionnaires were conducted online to the target respondents who were involved in the construction projects during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research area covers the Klang Valley which is centered in Kuala Lumpur and includes its adjoining cities and towns in the state of Selangor. The findings of this study reveal that the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) imposed by the government has significantly increased the project cost, such as hand sanitizer, face masks and Rapid Test Kit (RTK) provided to the workers. As a result, the contractor companies have suffered in maintaining their finances as they have to continue to pay their workers in full even when the companies are still surviving the epidemic of COVID-19. The findings of this study may assist construction parties as well as government bodies in strategically planning the finances in dealing with a similar pandemic situation in the future. Keywords: Project performance, Construction project, Contractor efforts, Movement control order. 1 INTRODUCTION The COVID-19 pandemic has first hit Malaysia in January 2020 and the numbers of registered COVID-19 cases keep on increasing at an exponential case every day. Subsequently, Malaysia topped the list of positive COVID-19 cases within Southeast Asia. On 16 March 2020, the number of positive cases exceeded 553 incidents forcing the Malaysian government to issue a Movement Control Order (MCO). As a result of the MCO, construction projects were experiencing project interruption and suspension due to a lack of supplies, transportation, and labor (Zamani et al. 2021). The majority of suppliers had to stop their business and therefore were unable to supply the requested supplies during the MCO period. Thus, this paper study the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic to project costs by identifying the factors that contribute to the escalation of project costs faced by construction companies during COVID-19 and efforts taken by construction companies in dealing with the escalation of the project cost.