Quality Of Construction Projects Research Articles

Critical Factors Affecting Quality Performance in Construction Projects

The reasons for the underperformance of the quality of Indian construction projects were studied to suggest possible remedial measures. A preliminary survey identified 55 attributes responsible to impact quality performance of the projects. Statistical analysis of questionnaire responses on the attributes resulted into two distinct sets of success and failure attributes. Further analyses of individual sets of success attributes and failure attributes separately grouped them into fewer critical success and failure factors. The critical success factors obtained were: project manager's competence; top management's support; monitoring and feedback by project participants; interaction among project participants; and owners' competence. The factors that adversely affected the quality performances of projects were: conflict among project participants; hostile socio-economic environment; harsh climatic condition; PM's ignorance & lack of knowledge; faulty project conceptualization; and aggressive competition during tendering. Analyses also led to the conclusion that the extent of contribution of various success factors varies with the current performance ratings of the project. Project manager's competence and top management support are found to contribute significantly in enhancing the quality performance of a construction project. As in the manufacturing industry, the study establishes that management plays an important role in achieving quality even in construction projects.

Diagnosing the organizational culture of an Australian engineering consultancy using the competing values framework

To operate successfully, a commercial organization must satisfy the everchanging demands of its clients, its owners, its employees and society as a whole. To do this, it must have a good understanding of its persona as perceived by its own members and the entities it deals with. This persona, or image an organization presents of itself, and the way in which it is perceived by its external environment and its internal members, is commonly referred to as its Corporate Culture (Deal and Kennedy, 1982; Silverzweig and Allen, 1976). The tangible aspects include corporate logos, uniforms and clothing, office layout, use of ‘in‐vogue’ technology and business processes, while behavioural indicators can include relative importance of social issues and norms such as time keeping, and adherence to prescribed procedures. This paper describes research within a single, large, Australian engineering, procurement and construction management consultancy aimed at identifying the form of its current corporate culture and the extent to which this is perceived to be appropriate by those involved. Using Quinn and Rohrbaugh’s (1983) Competing Values Framework, the overall cultural profile of the organization and dominant characteristic traits is determined through an in‐house electronic survey employing the Organizational Cultural Assessment Instrument. This indicated that the company has a dominant market‐oriented culture. In contrast, the most desired form was found to be the employee focused culture ‐ indicating a misalignment between what employees thought was needed and what was perceived to exist. This finding is considered in the light of recent reports identifying the detrimental effect of market‐oriented cultures, and the supporting role of employee focused cultures, in achieving construction project quality outcomes.

Assessment of Local Excavation Support Systems: A Case Study of Nablus City, Palestine

Excavations of soil and rock are one of the most important elements in laying the subsurface structures. These excavations usually require excavation support systems that have fundamental influence on the safety, profitability, speed and quality of construction projects. Despite the great importance of the support systems, most designers and contractors know very little about their design and construction and they rely heavily on experience. The goal of this paper is to present a review of excavation support systems available worldwide and to survey the current state of practice in the local area (Nablus - Palestine), including available types, reasons for failure, and methods of design and construction of excavation support systems. This paper also suggested new techniques that may be adopted locally as an excavation support system. Conclusions of this study are presented and recommendations are suggested to identify what research and development should be carried out to improve the process of design and construction of excavation support systems.

MODELING THE FACTORS AFFECTING QUALITY IN BUILDING CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS IN GAZA STRIP

The factors that affect the quality of building construction projects in Gaza Strip are identified. Nominal Group Technique (NGT) was used at the preliminary stage to identify these factors and to assist in developing a questionnaire to identify and rank these factors and the associated sub-factors. 65 contracting companies and 24 consulting offices participated in responding to the questionnaire. Using factor analysis and stepwise multiple regression analysis, the most important factors affecting the quality of the building construction projects were identified and modeled. Among the most significant factors identified are: characteristics of site layout, experience of site staff, consistency of design documents, the financial power of the contractor, availability of construction materials, subcontractors, political environment, and the control systems used.

An Evaluation of the Need for a Quality Assessment Scheme for Private Sector Construction Projects in Hong Kong

The Construction Industry Review Report has highlighted the recent spate of non-compliant construction incidents in Hong Kong, which has prompted widespread public concern on the quality of construction projects. Whilst public housing has received special attention due to extensive coverage in the media, the quality of private housing has seldom been put under the spotlight, thereby raising the question as to whether private sector works are of better quality than public sector works.Faced with this question and the increasing drive towards benchmarking in the construction industry, it appears that an objective measure of quality is necessary, both for providing feedback to designers and for raising the quality standards of construction works. Being inspired by the benefits brought about by the CONQUAS system in Singapore, the Housing Authority in Hong Kong had developed and implemented the PASS system for benchmarking workmanship quality in the public housing sector since 1990. As yet, there has not been any similar measure of construction quality in the private sector.Therefore, a recent survey was conducted in Hong Kong to evaluate the need for a quality assessment system for the private sector. This paper draws on empirical evidence obtained from Singapore as to the benefits of a common quality assessment scheme for both the public and private sectors, in addition to depicting findings of the Hong Kong survey, which demonstrate that defects occurrence is equally likely in both sectors.

Value Management through a Knowledge-Based Decision Support System for Managing Variations in Educational Building Projects

Value management (VM) in construction is urgently required due to the escalating complexity of building projects. Building projects are complex because they involve many human and non-human factors and variables. VM, if implemented during the early stages, can save costs while maintaining or even improving the performance and quality of construction projects. The integration of project knowledge and experience at the design phase provides the best opportunity to improve overall project performance. This study presents a knowledge-based decision support system (KBDSS) to assist effective implementation of VM for controlling variations in educational building projects. The KBDSS consists of two main components, namely a knowledge base and a controls selection shell, and is developed by collecting data from the source documents of 80 educational projects, a questionnaire survey, and interviews in Singapore.The system provides an excellent opportunity for the project team to learn from past experiences. The system assists the project team in identifying potential variations and their effective controls during the early stages of construction projects. Furthermore, the KBDSS provides the project team with information on what changes in design can cause to variations. The system also assists in reducing costs and improving designs because the most likely areas in which to focus to reduce variations can be identified early during the design stage of building projects. In short, as part of the VM processes, the system is able to assist the project team by providing accurate and timely information for decision making, and a user-friendly tool for analyzing and selecting the suggested controls for managing variations in educational buildings.

Managing technology in oil pipelines industry

Operating oil pipelines in an optimum capacity through out its life, effective construction management and failure free operations are considered as critical success factors in oil transportation business. Operating oil pipelines in derated capacity due to deteriorating pipeline health or lack of demand, non-ability of augmenting pipeline capacity despite of demand, non-achievement of time, cost, and quality of pipeline construction projects, and many failures of pipelines despite of huge expenditure in inspection and maintenance are the common phenomena in oil pipelines industry. These not only cause business loss, but also increase stakeholders' concerns for sustainable development. This study addresses the above issues using an analytical framework through stakeholders' involvement. Copyright © 2006 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Improving Quality of Construction Projects in Governmental Contracting Companies – Views of Project Managers at Ministry of Construction and Housing

Quality assurance as a cultural standing point and economic role become more essential in the view of the new activation of the Iraqi Construction Sector. A comprehensive view of local factors must be considered side by side with the international development issues. This paper discusses the results of obtaining construction managers consensus opinion on factors to improve quality in the construction projects of governmental contracting companies. With the aid of Nominal Group Technique a consensus opinion of 100 construction managers in the Ministry of Construction and Housing is obtained on 25 factors sudjested by them to improve quality on their projects together with the relative importance of each factor. A Pareto analysis is carried out to show the weight of contribution of each factor and it was found that basic wages and quality related incentives together with obligations and delegations to construction project managers are the most important factors. The factors that have the same source of problems were also combined and categorized into five areas where it was found that satisfaction and quality knowledge together with instructions and procedures are the most critical areas. These findings are compatible with the new philosophy of total quality management.

Forging improvements in classroom acoustical quality

Major investments are currently being made in school infrastructure. In Los Angeles alone, 90 new schools are to be constructed in the next 10 to 15 years, and hundreds of existing schools will undergo major renovation. Similar efforts are underway in large urban school districts throughout the country. This presents a unique opportunity to improve acoustical quality in classrooms for future generations of teachers and students. While some school districts are embracing this opportunity, there are substantial challenges to be faced before improvements in classroom acoustical quality are widely realized. Despite recent adoption of the ANSI standard, there are inconsistent views among school administrators and designers on the extent of the problem and the urgency to act. Additionally, there is insufficient data on the incremental costs of achieving improved acoustical quality in new construction or modernization projects. Meanwhile critical design and purchasing decisions are underway. There are promising examples of how school districts can successfully meet these challenges and forge improved acoustical quality in the learning environment. The focus of this discussion is on the use of policy reforms to drive better design and purchasing decisions, and how these decisions can be further influenced by community involvement and interagency collaboration.

Total quality, public management and critical leadership in civil construction projects

The effective and efficient use of resources in public project management requires a commitment to driving down costs and exploiting value opportunities. In achieving this, public management, being a civil service, must also be aware of social, political and ethical requirements that can impinge upon strict economic reasoning. Opening public management to market pressures has been criticized as potentially weakening concerns of social justice, but in areas like civil construction, it is vital if procurement, build and operation are to improve. A hypothesis was formulated that uses a total quality perspective to link improvements in project performance with the effective promotion of public interest. This hypothesis – that a total quality orientation can reconcile and enhance economic and public interests – was tested through a survey of major stakeholders in public construction projects. It was found that, by developing a concept of critical leadership to drive through quality commitment, there were cogen...

Measuring Quality of Construction Projects for Engineering Economic Analysis

This paper introduces a concept of measuring quality for engineering economic analysis to determine the best quality for construction projects. First, the quality of construction projects is defined and decomposed into component quality criteria. Next, the component quality criteria are quantified and the weights of relative importance level of each component quality criterion are determined. In this way, the value of the entire quality of construction projects can be consequently measured. Having measured the quality value, the engineering economic analysis can be applied and the optimum quality of construction projects will be determined by incremental quality value- costs ratio analysis accordingly.

Some observations on the issues of quality cost in construction

Looks at how the construction industry’s demand for better management of quality in construction projects is becoming increasingly important for every project participant. Says that one important aspect of a quality improvement programme is the cost of quality which is relatively new to participants of construction projects. Describes the results of a survey among professionals in the construction industry on the issues relating to the management of quality and especially its cost. Shows that results of the investigation indicate, among others, the importance of client role in determining the quality of the end product; the usefulness of information on non‐conformances in preventing failures and improving a process; problems with ground conditions; how most failure costs can be eliminated; how the contractor’s role should include anticipating of problems; and how information on the cost of failures can be an indicator of weaknesses and assist in preventing the same failure in the future.

Formulation of Best Practices for Owner's Representatives

Quality and productivity in construction could be achievable if the parties involved in the process identify and apply the relevant best practices to their business processes. This seeks the owner's/client's involvement in and commitment to adopting the industry's best practices into the business/project. To provide the owner/owner's representative with appropriate tasks and directions for improving quality and productivity in construction projects, research by Jawaharnesan and Price identified twelve important tasks to be performed by the owner's representative. The tasks were: preparing and organizing; developing project definition; procurement; organizing a joint management team; design management; safety management; measuring and reviewing performance; communications; motivation; coordination; documentation; and project postmortem. A survey of 38 of the major U.K. construction (owner) organizations coupled with interviews and literature review have evolved best practices to effectively perform each of the preceding tasks to achieve quality in construction. This paper evaluates these practices for their importance in improving the performance of the owner's representative.

Improving the Design-Review Process: The Reviewer's Assistant

Organizations using architect/engineer (A/E) services typically require reviews of partially completed designs prior to submission of the final design. Many A/E firms also conduct internal quality-control reviews. The objective of these reviews is to increase the cost-effectiveness, timeliness, and overall quality of the completed construction project. Including all project stakeholders in these design reviews is crucial. This paper reports the results of an analysis of the design-review process and the development of a tool to assist design reviewers. The tool, called the Reviewer's Assistant, assists reviewers by capturing, storing, and retrieving design-review comments, and compiling lessons learned. The storage of comments and compilation of lessons learned enable future reviewers to benefit from the experience gained on past reviews of similar projects.