Level of awareness of formwork design in the Ghanaian construction industry; enabling future technology application

Abstract

Purpose

In the Ghanaian construction industry (GCI), the option for stakeholders to adopt formwork design as a building construction requirement is uncommon place. This is due to the low level of awareness and practice of formwork design. As a result of this, there have been formwork accidents, cost and time overruns in construction. This paper aims to solicit the view of stakeholders on the awareness of formwork design practices in the GCI.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper adopted the interpretivism research philosophy and inductive reasoning. Through a semi-structured interview guide, data was collected. The data (interview) recorded was transcribed using the Amberscript web application. This study used thematic analysis in analyzing the data collected using Nvivo 10 software.

Findings

The data collected from the 22 professionals indicated that the respondents were unaware of the concept of formwork design and its practice, neither could they speak to the existence of any specific regulation nor code of practice. However, the respondents established that there was a need to design formwork and stated some benefits of it.

Originality/value

From the literature, little research has been done on formwork design and its context in the GCI is yet to be explored. This research attempts to fill this gap. The findings indicate that to practice formwork design, there must be education and training of human resources for formwork design, there must be a code of practice to guide the design process and legal backing through policies and regulations to mandate the design.

Citation

Boakye Danquah, C., Acheampong, A. and Adjei-Kumi, T. (2022), "Level of awareness of formwork design in the Ghanaian construction industry; enabling future technology application", Journal of Engineering, Design and Technology, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 1015-1039. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEDT-12-2020-0532