Search results

Design documents’ deficiencies (DDDs) are a major issue that plagues the construction industry in many countries. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the major causes of DDDs in a fast expanding economy, where errors can translate to an adverse impact on the economy. This paper aims to identify and assess the causes of DDDs for large construction projects from the consultants’ perspective.

In total, 20 causes of DDDs were shortlisted through an extensive literature survey. In total, 37 consultants based in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia participated in the study. The respondents were requested to provide their opinion with respect to the relative importance of the identified causes. The result of their responses was then used to rank the causes.

Based on their significance indices, the most significant causes of DDDs were “assigning design tasks to designers who lack work experience,” “team members’ communication skills,” “the level and quality of the design professional’s education,” “cross-disciplinary coordination,” “effective design team,” and “lack of knowledge transfer mechanism.”

Recommendations were provided to mitigate the issues of DDDs. It is envisioned that through a better understanding of the major causes of DDDs, design firms will be better positioned to recognize DDDs’ causes and establish appropriate measures for reducing their occurrence. The findings of this paper are beneficial to all project stakeholders, including design firms, clients, contractors, and end users.

This paper contributes to the literature by providing an assessment of the various causes of DDDs in the context of a rapidly expanding economy, where any inefficiency can lead to massive losses to the economy.

ISO 9001 is an international specification that provides certification for quality management systems (QMSs) after careful external auditing. However, certified companies rarely evaluate their quality systems after being certified. The certificate needs to be renewed periodically where companies are encouraged to evaluate their gained benefits and improve their QMS’s deficient areas. The purpose of this paper is to provide a method of evaluation based on the level of customers’ satisfaction over five metrics (reliability, assurance, tangible, empathy, and responsiveness).

The methodology enables to benchmark the current level of satisfaction with prior levels of satisfaction before the ISO 9001 certification. The methodology is applied for the QMS pertinent to the design services (DS) for a large public company in Saudi Arabia. Three case studies were undertaken on the DS for large-scale construction projects.

The results were compared between year 2008 (total of 77 projects) and year 2011 (total of 39 projects). The results show that the ISO 9001 certificate may not always demonstrate an evidence of improving customers’ satisfaction levels and, hence, a gap analysis should be implemented to define possible areas of improvement.

This work is limited to the construction industry. In specific, it addresses only the customer satisfaction related to the design management services. However, Saudi Arabia is known to host many large scale organizations that are heavily involved in international business trade. Hence, the authors believe that the Saudi industry can leverage their practices up to the international standards and similarly the international practices can accommodate some of the best practices in Saudi Arabia.

It is a general perception in the industry that ISO 9000 implementation will mean good quality products. This work provides the argument that the ISO 9000 implementation should be tested on a regular basis to validate this perception. It shows that in some cases the ISO 9000 did not improve the customers’ satisfaction and, hence, the need arises for gap analysis to modify the QMS.

Projects in the construction industry have been confronted with an unprecedented volume of claims, which negatively impact the construction business environment. The purpose of this paper is to identify and assess the major causes of claims and disputes, from the perspectives of three key stakeholders.

An online and paper-based questionnaire was distributed to a random sample of 250 professionals. Responses from 86 construction professionals were obtained. The significance index was employed to rank the factors and hence assess their relative significance. Results were analyzed from both the individual stakeholder, and collective perspectives. Test of agreement was also conducted.

The research found the following causes to be the most significant contributors to claims and disputes in Saudi Arabia: “change or variation orders due to new requirements from client” (78 percent), “variations in quantities due to new requirements from client” (74 percent), “delay caused by contractor” (74 percent), “design errors or omissions” (72 percent) and “inconsistencies in the drawings and specifications” (70 percent).

The research provides an in-depth assessment of the causes of claims and disputes, in the setting of a fast growing industry, in which strong performance is essential to continued success. Unlike several of the reviewed studies which reported “delay caused by the owner” or “delayed in payment” as a major cause of claims and/or disputes, the findings of the current study indicated that this cause was not the most significant. Instead, it was determined that the top causes of claims and disputes were attributed to all parties, including consultants, contractors and clients.

The literature revealed a limited number of studies on critical success factors (CSFs) in Saudi Arabia. These studies were either outdated, covered limited factors or focused on very specific issues of a project. In response to this knowledge gap, the purpose of this paper is to identify and assess the factors which affect the success of construction projects in Saudi Arabia.

In all, 91 CSFs were identified from the literature, and grouped under eight categories according to categorization schemes adopted by earlier studies and common characteristics shared by the factors. A questionnaire survey was adopted since it permits the collection of large volumes of data in a short period. In total, 61 responses from industry experts were used to compute the significance index for each factor and rank the most CSFs.

Contractors viewed the three most significant CSFs as “competency and capability of the contractors’ key personnel in different disciplines,” “adequacy of labor resources and their skills” and “the impact of the project on the public.” Consultants viewed the three most significant CSFs as “competency and capability of the consultants’ key personnel in different disciplines,” “clear communication channels between the owner/PM and the designer” and “PM competency, authority and involvement.”

Although a significant number of studies have investigated CSFs for construction projects, these studies do not provide an extensive list of CSFs, and none have studied CSFs in large-scale construction projects in Saudi Arabia from the viewpoint of two key stakeholders. This study attempts to address this knowledge gap.

In this work, a framework for assessing construction contractors' performance in Saudi Arabia is developed. Usually, a contractor's assessment is based on financial aspects, which are lagging indicators in nature, and can ignore other nonfinancial aspects. Hence, a more detailed contractors' assessment framework is needed for the construction industry in Saudi Arabia. A framework that integrates financial and nonfinancial aspects in one model will enable contractors to better benchmark their performance to the rest of Saudi Arabia's construction industry.

Initially, the literature is reviewed and the most commonly used key performance indicators (KPIs) are identified and surveyed through contractors’ feedback to ensure their proper alignment with Saudi Arabia’s construction industry. The adopted set of KPIs will be further prioritized through the relative importance index (RII) method based on the surveyed contractors’ perceptions. Furthermore, the important set of KPIs will be factored into various groups using principle component analysis (PCA). Finally, the findings are validated through expert judgment.

All key performance indicators (KPIs) have proven to be significant, except for the environmental factor, which happens to be nonsignificant and hence has been omitted from further consideration. The remaining KPIs have been factored through the principle component analysis method. Five generic dimensions were identified: Performance, Satisfaction, Actual Metrics, Estimated Metrics and Compliance. The model has been validated by expert feedback, and it was found to be reliable.

The proposed model establishes an assessment framework to aid building construction contractors in assessing their performance in real time, in addition to postconstruction assessment for business development and retrofitting purposes.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the key drivers for adopting electronic bidding (e-bidding) systems in public construction projects located in Saudi Arabia.

Literature review was undertaken to identify the drivers of e-bidding practices. Nine drivers, classified under four categories, were identified. A questionnaire survey was developed to assess the significance of the identified drivers. Responses were obtained from 20 large contractors, classified as Grade I and II contractors in Saudi Arabia, and 12 governmental authorities, representing owners of construction projects. The drivers were ranked according to their respective significance index (SI) values. Finally, a Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient was employed to ascertain the extent to which the two parties agreed on the significance level of the drivers.

Analysis of the identified drivers revealed that the most significant driver was “reduction in the physical storage requirements of bidding paperwork.” Further, a consensus was observed with regards to the significance of the drivers. The findings of the present study highlight the strong potential of widespread e-bidding adoption in Saudi Arabia. It demonstrates the key drivers for the implementation of e-bidding through the perspective of professionals within the context of Saudi Arabia.

Prior to this study, no previous research has endeavored to assess the drivers of e-bidding adoption in Saudi Arabia. The adoption of e-bidding will benefit organizations through improved efficiencies, which could potentially lower construction costs, thereby contributing to economic growth and benefitting the society at large.

The objectives of this paper are to identify and assess the factors that affect the cost of maintenance of hospital facilities.

The authors conducted a literature review on hospital maintenance cost to identify the factors affecting the cost of maintenance and interviewed a selected group of ten experienced facilities managers of both public and private hospitals. 33 factors were identified, and synthesized in seven groups. A questionnaire survey was developed to assess the factors. Responses were obtained on the developed questionnaire survey by interviewing the facilities managers of the full population of the 40 hospitals in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, 20 of which were public hospitals and the other 20 were private hospitals. The data received were analyzed to identify the level of importance for the factors. The factors were ranked according to their importance index values.

The most important factors from the perspectives of public hospitals are “transfer of problems from the construction phase to the maintenance phase for resolution”, “lack of coordination between the construction and maintenance group”, and “lack of quality control measures during the installation of systems”. These three factors were all encompassed within the construction group. The most important factors from the perspectives of the private hospitals were encompassed in the statutory requirements and the design phase groups. These factors are “duration of the maintenance contract” and “the method of classifying maintenance contractors”, “errors conducted during the design of the project” and “lack of feedback from the maintenance group to the design team”.

This paper is of practical significance to hospital project managers and facilities managers, as it will prompt the management of hospital facilities to focus on the most important factors affecting the cost of maintenance and thereby reduce that cost.

This paper is original in the sense that the areas of knowledge and practice encompassed in the identified factors were scattered and not available in one source. The factors were derived from personal interviews with selected facilities managers of both private and public hospitals, as well as from the relevant literature.

The purpose of this paper is to present the development of a multi-criteria decision-making model for use by maintenance managers to consider before making a decision on outsourcing.

Thirty-eight factors were identified for outsourcing maintenance services. These factors were grouped under six categories, namely: “strategic”, “management”, “technological”, “quality”, “economic” and “function characteristics”. The Analytic Hierarchy Process, as a multi-criteria decision-making model, was introduced and applied as an approach for maintenance managers in Saudi Arabian universities to consider before making a decision on outsourcing. A case study on the outsourcing decision of maintenance services of air-conditioning systems was carried out to apply the developed model.

Data analysis indicated that all outsourcing decision groups of factors have almost equal weight, with the “quality” group of factors having the highest weight and the “technological” group of factors having the least weight. Further, the analysis indicated, in general, that the recommended decision for the maintenance managers is to outsource. However, an application of the developed model through a case study on the outsourcing of maintenance services of air-conditioning systems showed that the recommended action is not to outsource.

The presented approach in this paper could be of practical benefit to maintenance managers in their decision making of whether or not to outsource maintenance services. The factors in the model were identified through a literature survey of research carried out in different countries. Therefore, the model could be applied in different settings, depending on the relative weight of the factors by the users.

Outlines the defects and faults during the design stage that affect building maintenance in Saudi Arabia and their relative degree of importance. Performed a survey of a randomly selected sample of 90 contractors, 30 architectural/engineering firms (A/Es), and 20 owners from the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. The survey included 35 defects and the respondents were asked to indicate their degree of importance. The defects were grouped into six groups. The level of importance of the defects and the groups were measured and ranked by their severity index for contractors, owners and A/Es. The following results were obtained: contractors, A/Es and owners generally agree on the ranking of the individual defects; contractors and A/Es agree on the ranking of the defect groups whereas contractors and owners, A/Es and owners do not agree; the construction drawings group of defects was ranked highly by all three parties whereas the architectural design group of defects received a low ranking.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the main factors that affect the construction cost of affordable housing in Saudi Arabia.

A survey of 14 consultants, 16 contractors and five real estate investors was performed. The survey included 34 different factors affecting the construction cost of affordable houses and their degree of importance. The severity of those factors was measured by the level of importance and ranked according to the severity index for consultants, contractors and real estate investors and a combination of all respondents.

There is an agreement (correlation) by each group and the overall ranking by all participants. It was concluded that inadequate labor availability, material standards, design quality and design changes are the most severe factors with relatively high overall scoring.

The paper provides a holistic approach that considers all factors affecting affordable housing in Saudi Arabia and the interplay between them. It will serve as a guide to the focus areas to be considered in policy development aiming at improving conditions in the construction industry for affordable housing programs.