Track: Construction Management

Abstract

Errors on construction sites occur frequently and can be costly for the contractors and owners of constructed facilities. In fact, 6-15% of construction cost is found to be wasted due to rework of defective components detected late during construction. Cost of poor quality (COPQ) in the construction industry is a serious problem that the industry is facing. Hence, the study analyzed the causes of poor quality in construction projects in the Swaziland construction industry. This research adopted quantitative research and 50 useable questionnaires were used as an instrument tool for the study. Random sampling method was used to select the respondents in various construction companies. Cost of poor quality impact the construction industry of Swaziland’s and construction companies have to reserve funds for such occurrences, since poor quality cannot be tolerated and contractor have to rectify at own cost. Findings revealed that Ineffective monitoring and feedback by Project Members was the cause of poor quality on most construction site; lack of planning and coordination; Reluctance in timely decision by top management; Ineffective monitoring and feedback by the project team members; Poor human resource management and labour strike; Failure to identify problems and institute necessary design and programming changes; Government’s way of procuring-choosing the lowest bidder; Inadequate project formulation in the beginning; Another challenge was underpricing the construction project and rectifying construction mistake it becomes a big problem for the contractor. The results of this study have shown that it is difficult to define quality in the construction industry. The cost of poor quality (COPQ) has a negative impact on the project and construction companies as productivity, additional work and repair, loss of the clients’ confidence in contractor which may eventually put the contractors out of business are some of the main ripple effects of cost of poor quality.

Keywords

Construction, Cost of Poor Quality, Challenges