Evaluation of Factors affecting the Quality of Construction Projects

Technical Journal, University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Taxila, Pakistan

Vol. 20(SI) No.II(S)-2015

Evaluation of Factors affecting the Quality of Construction Projects M. Abas1, S.B. Khattak2*, I. Hussain2, S. Maqsood2, I. Ahmad2 1

Mechanical Engineering Department, Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Topi, Pakistan 2 Industrial Engineering Department, University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar, Pakistan *Corresponding Author: [email protected]

developed and can be applied to all type of organization [iv]. Quality is affected by shortages of materials, equipment’s, design changes, error in cost estimation and lack of budget [v]. The other factors affecting quality are deficiencies in scheduling, inappropriate planning and unclear evaluation standards [vi]. The significance of these factors depends on type of projects, working environment and local culture. The basic aim of this research is to identify the success and adverse factors that have significant effect on quality performance of construction projects of Pakistan. The factors were ranked based on chi-square and weighted mean statistical analysis. II. LITERATURE The quality is a key function in all infrastructure development environment like cost and time. It becomes one of the vital factor in any construction project [vii]. In construction projects lack of quality results in delays, cost overrun, and unsafe structure [viii]. There are three types of costs associated with quality. First one is appraisal cost: the cost of testing and inspection, second one is failure cost: the cost of rework, and third one is prevention cost : the cost of maintenance and better design [iii]. Many researches have been carried out both in developed and developing countries to investigate the factors that have a substantial effect on the quality of construction projects. Some literature is explained below to highlight the factors affecting quality of construction projects. Factors that causes quality problems in Pakistan are material prices escalation, inflation, procurement, selection of material, lack of communication, and poor on site supervision [ix]. Reference [x] have investigated adverse factors on quality of Indian construction projects, which are bad weather condition, communication problem, lack of project management skills, and low bids due to excessive competition. Construction project quality in Gaza strip is significantly affected by

Abstract-Quality is one of the important aspects of all projects. The level of success of construction projects greatly depends on the quality performance. The Pakistan construction sector is facing quality related issues, which lead to ineffective and inefficient projects in terms of cost of overrun, delays and excessive rework. This research is carried out to scrutinize the factors, that have triumphed and adverse effect on the construction projects. A questionnaire was developed based on identified factors to take opinion of construction experts. After their feedback a statistical analysis tool such as chisquare and weighted mean method (WMM) were used to rank the significance level of these factors. Key words-Quality, Construction projects, Pakistan, Internal factors, External factors, Chi-Square, Weighted Mean Method I. INTRODUCTION The definition of quality depends on the point of view of the people defining it; some view it as “conformance to specification. Others view it as “performance to standards or value paid for the price [i]. For construction firm quality is nothing but the satisfaction of customers and fulfilling of their requirements with in a specified budget. Quality is one of the important key performance indicators of a construction project which may cause cost overrun and time delays. Quality control (QC) and quality assurance organizations are established only as a result of prescribed requirements [ii]. In construction sector quality control can be looked upon as client satisfaction, relation with cost, and enough time to obtain anticipated quality [iii]. A quality assurance system has been developed by an international standard organization (ISO) for improving quality and overcoming the quality related problems. For quality ISO 9001 series have been

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availability of construction materials, political environment, site staff experience and proper documentation [xi]. Reference [xii] study the factor affecting the quality performance of building projects in Hong Kong. The major factors are client, effective project management, building effective construction team, and environment in which project is conducting. The findings of Reference [xiii] shows that continuous improvement, training of employees, effective communication, and building an effective project team are the factors affecting quality. The quality problems are due to management, improper planning, carelessness, lack of training and improper use of materials [xiv]. Refrence [xv] studied the major problems with quality performance in the Malaysian construction Industry. These problems are lack of technical person availability, lack of awareness about quality management system, and lack of training workers. Refrence [xvi] discuss the factors that can improve the quality of construction projects. These factors are correct estimation of cost, implementation of ISO 9000, effective utilization of resources, implementing new technologies, proper planning and improving quality control system. For good performance in quality of construction projects following factors are necessary, joint working, mutual objective, no blame culture, introducing quality assurance methods, effective management team of contractors, no enforcement of bureaucracy and politics. [xvii]. Quality problems occur due to lack of continuous improvement in process, and internal auditing problems [xviii]. Lack of trust with supplier, poor training system and communication gap among project participants are factor contributing to poor quality performance [xix]. Pakistan engineering council (PEC) has divided the contractors in to different categories. They are total eight (8) categories which are named as: Category A (CA), Category B (CB), Category 1 (C1), and Category 2 (C2), Category (C3), Category 4 (C4), Category 5 (C5) and Category 6 (C6) [xx]. These categories are not permanent, but changes depending on the policies of PEC and license agreement. For the current research the top four categories of contractors were selected which are: CA, CB, C1 and C2. To conclude the literature review. It shows that level of significance changes. It is not easy to identify the generalize factors that have an effect on quality of construction projects in Pakistan. Therefore, the aim of this research is to identify the factors, both success and


adverse that affects the quality of construction projects in Pakistan region. III. METHODOLOGY The literature review and discussion with experts assisted to identify the factors affecting the quality performance of construction projects. In literature review past researches from both developed and developing countries had been studied. The experts were construction practitioners, who had more than fifteen (15) years of experience in the construction business. The finalized factors are shown in Table I. A total of 31 factors are selected for this research. Factors such as trust, communication and benefit sharing are selected as they ar related to project team. Factors such as weather condition, inflation, and political influence etc; are also considered as they are relaed to overall project performance parameters. TABLE I IDENTIFIED FACTORS

S.No 1

Identified factors PC-1

S.No 17

Identified Factor Trust with supplier Communication Problem Solving

18 Funding 19 Procurement Unit of Contractors 20 Risk Allocation 4 Financial capability of Contractor 21 Continuous 5 Management team Improvement of Contractor 22 Incentive 6 Communication Mechanism Infrastructure 23 Pain and Gain 7 Escalation of Sharing Material Prices 24 Performance 8 Technical Person Measurement Availability 25 Joint Working 9 Cash Flow 26 No Blame Culture 10 Shortage of Material/ Equipment 11 Law and Order 27 ISO Certification Situation 12 Low Bid 28 Benefit Shared 13 Weather Condition 29 Mutual Objective 14 Bureaucracy and 30 Government Political Influence Policies 15 Terrorism 31 Inflation 16 Regulatory Authorities In order to take the opinion of construction firm about identified factors, a questionnaire was developed. To make questionnaire simple and easy to understand, it was divided into three sections. The first section includes demography of respondent, such as qualification, 2 3

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designation, and experience. The second section includes information about the company for e.g .type and numbers of project conducted by them yearly. In the third section weights were assigned to factors in relation to quality for interpretation of data. Weights are in the range of 1 to 9. One (1) to four (4) is in low range, four (4) to seven (7) is in medium range, and seven (7) to nine (9) is in the high range. A survey was conducted by distributing a developed questionnaire to different construction practioners. A total of 160 questionnaires were distributed through emails and mail. Also interviews were conducted with few respondents. All the respondents approached were contractors of different classes such as Class A, Class B, Class 1, and Class 2. About 110 questionnaires were received out of which 9 were discarded due to lack of information. So the total response ratio of collected questionnaires is 63.125 %. The Table II shows the information about questionnaire responses.

reliability of collected data. For this reason a Chronbach’s alpha and independent t-test were conducted using SPSS software. The Table III and IV shows the SPSS results. Table III shows that collected data is valid 100% . TABLE III CASE PROCESSING SUMMARY

N % 100 100.0 Valid 0.00 0.00 Excludeda 100 100.0 Total a List wise detection based on all variables in the procedure Table IV shows the reliability of data. The data is reliable when alpha value is higher than 0.70. As the value of alpha is 0.830, so data is highly reliable. Cases

TABLE IV RELIABILITY STATISTICS

Cronbach’s Alpha .880

TABLE II QUESTIONNAIRE RESPONSES

Category of contractor s Class A

Class B

Class 1

Class 2

Designation of Respondent

Experienc e (Years)

Project Manager Quantity Surveyors Project Engineer Project Manager Project Engineer Procurement Manager Project Manager Project Engineer General Director Project Manager Project Engineer

13-16

Cronbach’s Alpha Based on Standardized items .883

N of items 27

11

B. Independent t-test for response agreement It is important to check whether there are conflicts in the views of respondents or not. So for this reason independent t-test was conducted with the help of SPSS software. Randomly, two questionnaires were selected from each category. The Table V shows the t-test results.

5

INDEPENDENT T-TEST RESULTS

Number of Response s

13-15

TABLE V

12-15

Categories t-test P-value CA-CB -0.526 0.602 CA-C1 0.825 0.415 CA-C2 -1.687 0.100 CB-C1 -1.220 0.230 CB- C2 -2.009 0.052 C1-C2 1.215 0.232 The t-test is insignificant because all values of “P” as shown in Table V are less than 0.05, so we conclude that there are no conflicts on rating of factors among the different respondent’s. IV. DATA ANALYSIS To easily compare the factors with international standards and with global construction parameters, the weighted mean method is used. The first step towards analysis is to evaluate and assess the data, for that reseaon chi-square and descriptive statistical methods are used. a. Weighted Mean Method (WMM) In this method weights are assigned to each value of data that have some importance over the other. As in

8 10-14 13 8-11 14 7-10 5 6-9 10 8-10 10 14-16 5 10-13 9 7-10 11 Total


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A. Cronbach’s alpha test for data validation The data were collected independently from different respondents at different designation and from different organizations. So it is important to check the validity and

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current research questionnaires are collected from respondents with changing experience. So weights are assigned to each questionnaire based on years of experience respondent have in the construction sector. The generalized formula is shown below in (1). WMM=∑(fi*ni) / ∑ni (1) Where “fi” represent the weight assigned by ith respondent, and “ni” shows the experience of ith respondent rating the factor fi. The calculation based on weighted mean method is shown in Table VI b. Chi-square analysis The chi-square test is generally used to check the dependency of two variables. The test is significant when P-value is less than 0.05, while less significant when greater than 0.05. For present research, Chi-square was performed to check the level of significance of identified factors on quality. Hypothesis were developed to identify the level of significance and ranked the factors based on P- values of Chi-square. Test of Hypothesis: General hypothesis is made relating quality to other factors. Null Hypothesis H0: The relation between quality and identified factors is less significant. Alternate Hypothesis H1: The relation between quality and identified factors is highly significant For P- values less than 0.05 null hypothesis (H0) is rejected, while the alternative hypothesis (H1) are accepted. For P-values greater than 0.05 alternate hypothesis (H1) is rejected, while null hypothesis (H0) are accepted. The hypotheses are applied to results shown in Table VI. TABLE VI

ChiSquare

Pvalue

WMM

7.7185 7.6651 7.6006

Continuous Improvement

31.200

0

Joint Working Communication Technical Person Availability ISO certification Procurement Unit of Contractor Shortage of Material/Equipment Escalation of Material prices Performance Measurement

53.067 28.333 24.133

0 0 0

22.400 22.733

0 0.001

24.400

0.001

22.267

0.002

19.467

0.003

Problem solving PC-1 Preparation Bad Weather Bureaucracy and Political Influence Cash Flow

18.000 23.400 20.667 18.533

0.003 0.003 0.004 0.005

19.067

0.008

Funding

19.800

0.011

Low Bid

16.933

0.018

Financial Capability of Contractor Management Team of Contractor Law and Order Situation Trust with supplier Risk allocation

13.400

0.037

16.200

0.04

12.467 15.000 12.133

0.052 0.059 0.096

Inflation Incentive Mechanism

13.200 12.600

0.105 0.126

Mutual Objective No blame Culture

12.600 6.333

0.126 0.176

Pain and Gain sharing Benefit shared

10.00 8.400

0.189 0.299

7.0462 6.9646 6.9030 6.8974 6.8845 6.8337 6.8037 6.6490 6.6351 6.4594 6.4488 6.3252 6.1748 5.9548 5.9238 5.9042 5.9003

5.6975 V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION For discussion purposes, we selected top six factors based on chi-square hypothesis and WMM as shown in Figure 1. The selected factors have “P” values of zero based on chi-square analysis, while different values based on WMM. The WMM value of Continuous Improvement is 7.7185, Joint Working is 7.6651, Communication is 7.6006, technical person availability is 7.5511, ISO certification is 7.2613 and procurement unit of the contractor is 7.1559.

FACTORS RANKING

Factors


Ranking of factors based on Chi-square and WMM WMM Procurement Unit of… ISO certification Technical Person… Communication Joint working Continuous…

7.5511 7.2613 7.1559 7.1293

P-Value 0.001 0 0 0 0 0

7.1559 7.2613 7.5511 7.6006 7.6651 7.7185

Figure. 1 Ranking of factors based on Chi-square and WMM

7.1104 7.1513

Continuous improvement focuses on quality and efficiency of the process. It is not an individual

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contractors are ISO 9001 certified. The reason is lack of awareness, and more focus on cost of construction projects. The major benefits that can be achieved are continuous improvement, total quality management and improved worth methods. For ISO 9001 the contractors need to focus on, continuous improvement, involve everyone in decision making, customer, problem solving, prompt decision making, and to develop trust with key supplier. Quality of construction projects is also affected by procurement unit. The procurement unit needs to develop good relations with key suppliers to take advantage of good quality and on time supply. Good material results in good quality performance, while on time supply avoids shortages and reduces lead time of construction projects. The contractor should implement enterprise resource planning (ERP), which help to optimize the calculation of the bill of material. The contractor should implement scientific procedures in procurement methods and discourage the traditional methods. Avoid excessive variation in orders during construction projects. The contractor should include the procurement unit in vital phases such as bidding and planning. VI. CONCLUSION Good quality performance makes the construction project successful. The performance can be increased by studying and improving the factors that affect the quality significantly. In this research, we have identified these factors and took feedback via questionnaires from construction practitioners.. The critical factors identified are continuous improvement, joint working, communication, technical person availability, ISO certification and procurement unit of the contractor. The identified factors are for general construction, including building, road, and bridges, etc... The contractors should acknowledge these factors on a priority basis when conducting construction project. The contractor should implement new technologies; build an effective risk management team as well as quality management team. Daily supervises the material as well as work. Introduce supply chain procedure. REFERENCES

responsibility, but it can be achieved by teamwork. The best way to achieve continuous improvement is hiring the right person for the right job, training the employees in total quality management (TQM), assigning the responsibilities, and shares the pain and gain with the key partners. At the end of project prepare the questionnaire regarding the quality performance of the project and asked your client to rate it, which will help the contractor to improve the quality in future, projects. Joint working or working in partnering is basically the sharing of work with subcontractors for the purpose of same goal and objectives. It is also one of the success factors affecting quality of projects. It is a team based approach and its primary focus is to improve quality of the project, eliminate or reduce clashes, privileges and lawsuit. Long term partnership provides a continuous improvement environment because everyone in the project focuses on effective utilization of resources and to avoid quality defects. A contractor need to develop a risk management team with key partner, so both parties must be aware of risk and its impact on quality of construction projects. On time communication is success factor of quality. Eliminate or reduce the paper culture in organization by automating the site communication system, by introducing the protocol system such as intranet, extranet, and virtual private network. These systems help in prompting communication among the project participants. It not only assist in reducing extra work but also decreases the lead time of a construction project. Technical persons or in other words, we called it construction engineers are basically the job site assistant who manages the site operations. They are responsible for quality assurance of a construction project. The contractors should hire the persons who possess domain expertise in construction projects. The basic responsibilities of construction engineer is to develop and report project schedules and forecasts, regular project status, budget monitoring and trend tracking, bill of materials. Effective communications between engineering, technical, construction, and project controls groups, and assistance to the project manager is also in project manager domain. These responsibilities help in good quality performance and reduce the lead time of a construction project. ISO certification helps to improve the quality performance of construction projects. The study of [xxi] reveals that the organization which are ISO 9000 certified are more profitable and perform good performance in quality as compared to non ISO certified. It helps in functioning and creating the quality management system. Based on the feedback of questionnaires a very few

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