The Impact of Material Management on Construction Project Delivery in Somalia

Abstract

Materials management practice is a procedurethat coordinates planning, requirement assessment,sourcing, purchasing, transporting, materials storing and controlling, wastage minimisationand cost reduction for profit optimization.Material management have been a great problem to most firms in the construction industrydue to a tendency of mismanagement of materials.The scale of activities concerning materials managementincreases as the size of the contract increase.Thisstudycentered on the impact of materials management practices in the Somaliaconstruction project delivery.The objectives ofthis studyaretoinvestigate the current practice of material management at construction projects, to identify the causes of ineffective material management, and to examine the impact of material management process to the construction project delivery.A questionnaire survey was conducted to collect data from Grade A contractor company in Mogadishu, Somalia and the respondent consist of project managers, civil engineers, architect and site managers. The findings revealed that current practice of material management in construction projects in Somalia include identifying the needed materials, consideration of site layout and location, materialavailableclose to site, material conformwith specifications and material supplied on-time. The studyalsofound thatmost common root causes of ineffective material management were undefined scope, incomplete drawings, inadequate information on material supply, poor scheduling of material on site, nodetermination ofwhat and whenthe material needed and lack indeterminingthe quantity of material needed. Furthermore, the respondents of this research indicated that the occurrence of cost overrun and delay in progress of the work are the major impacts of ineffective material management thatbring negative impact to the construction project delivery in Somalia. The research concludes that effective material management practice can improve the overall handling of material and smooth project delivery on site.Aproper planning of material management practice right from the start of the project execution should be practiced on site in order to ensure timely execution of the project and standard of the work delivery within reasonable cost, time and quality.