Dr. Somik Ghosh was recently interviewed by Bluebeam about his thoughts on the impact of COVID-19 on the construction industry.
According to Dr. Somik Ghosh, professor at the University of Oklahoma’s Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture and a construction safety expert, this isolation isn’t practical in construction.
“Especially when the project gets toward completion, there is an influx of workers in different trades that come in during the finishing stages,” Ghosh said. “It’s not a question of the flow of workers within one workplace, but multiple workplaces where these individuals are traveling.”
This constant flow of workers from different trade specialty areas makes it especially critical to reduce on-site exposure to decrease the risk of transmission between jobsites.
Ghosh said that the industry will have to reduce physical contact between workers on each site to reduce the risk of transmission. “Reducing crowding is key,” Ghosh said. “It can be done by increasing total work hours so that people work in multiple shifts, or by taking a hard look at the way we used to schedule.”
“Instead of having everybody work on the same floor,” Ghosh continued, “maybe we think about splitting the workforce into multiple floors if it’s a multi-story building or working within different zones on a horizontal project.”
Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture congratulates Thinh "Henry" Duong, a master's student in the Division of Interior Design, for earning first place in the 2026 Robert Bruce Thompson Annual Student Light Fixture Design Competition.
Gibbs College of Architecture Institute for Quality Communities (IQC) Director and Division of Planning, Landscape Architecture, and Design (PLAD) faculty member Amber N. Wiley, Ph.D., recently published a new book, Collective Yearning: Black Women Artists from the Zimmerli Art Museum.
In May, students from the Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture's Architecture, Environmental Design, and Interior Design programs participated in an intensive five-day Studio in Residence at Taliesin West, the iconic winter home and desert laboratory of Frank Lloyd Wright.
