Technical Journal, University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Taxila, Pakistan
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: sikandarbilal@uetpeshawar.edu.pk
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 chi-
square 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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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
 Technical Journal, University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Taxila, Pakistan Vol. 20(SI) No.II(S)-2015

availability of construction materials, political adverse that affects the quality of construction projects in
environment, site staff experience and proper Pakistan region.
documentation [xi]. III. METHODOLOGY
Reference [xii] study the factor affecting the quality The literature review and discussion with experts
performance of building projects in Hong Kong. The assisted to identify the factors affecting the quality
major factors are client, effective project management, performance of construction projects. In literature review
building effective construction team, and environment in past researches from both developed and developing
which project is conducting. The findings of Reference countries had been studied. The experts were construction
[xiii] shows that continuous improvement, training of practitioners, who had more than fifteen (15) years of
employees, effective communication, and building an experience in the construction business. The finalized
effective project team are the factors affecting quality. factors are shown in Table I. A total of 31 factors are
The quality problems are due to management, improper selected for this research. Factors such as trust,
planning, carelessness, lack of training and improper use communication and benefit sharing are selected as they ar
of materials [xiv]. related to project team. Factors such as weather
Refrence [xv] studied the major problems with condition, inflation, and political influence etc; are also
quality performance in the Malaysian construction considered as they are relaed to overall project
Industry. These problems are lack of technical person performance parameters.
availability, lack of awareness about quality management TABLE I
IDENTIFIED FACTORS
system, and lack of training workers. Refrence [xvi]
S.No Identified factors S.No Identified Factor
discuss the factors that can improve the quality of
1 PC-1 17 Trust with
construction projects. These factors are correct estimation supplier
of cost, implementation of ISO 9000, effective utilization 2 Funding 18 Communication
of resources, implementing new technologies, proper 3 Procurement Unit of 19 Problem Solving
planning and improving quality control system. Contractors
For good performance in quality of construction 4 Financial capability 20 Risk Allocation
projects following factors are necessary, joint working, of Contractor
mutual objective, no blame culture, introducing quality 5 Management team 21 Continuous
assurance methods, effective management team of of Contractor Improvement
contractors, no enforcement of bureaucracy and politics. 6 Communication 22 Incentive
Infrastructure Mechanism
[xvii]. Quality problems occur due to lack of continuous
7 Escalation of 23 Pain and Gain
improvement in process, and internal auditing problems
Material Prices Sharing
[xviii]. Lack of trust with supplier, poor training system 24 Performance
8 Technical Person
and communication gap among project participants are Availability Measurement
factor contributing to poor quality performance [xix]. 9 Cash Flow 25 Joint Working
Pakistan engineering council (PEC) has divided the 10 Shortage of 26 No Blame Culture
contractors in to different categories. They are total eight Material/ Equipment
(8) categories which are named as: Category A (CA), 11 Law and Order 27 ISO Certification
Category B (CB), Category 1 (C1), and Category 2 (C2), Situation
Category (C3), Category 4 (C4), Category 5 (C5) and 12 Low Bid 28 Benefit Shared
Category 6 (C6) [xx]. These categories are not 13 Weather Condition 29 Mutual Objective
permanent, but changes depending on the policies of PEC 14 Bureaucracy and 30 Government
and license agreement. For the current research the top Political Influence Policies
four categories of contractors were selected which are: 15 Terrorism 31 Inflation
CA, CB, C1 and C2. 16 Regulatory
To conclude the literature review. It shows that level Authorities
In order to take the opinion of construction firm
of significance changes. It is not easy to identify the
about identified factors, a questionnaire was developed.
generalize factors that have an effect on quality of
To make questionnaire simple and easy to understand, it
construction projects in Pakistan. Therefore, the aim of
was divided into three sections. The first section includes
this research is to identify the factors, both success and
demography of respondent, such as qualification,

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designation, and experience. The second section includes reliability of collected data. For this reason a
information about the company for e.g .type and numbers Chronbach’s alpha and independent t-test were conducted
of project conducted by them yearly. In the third section using SPSS software. The Table III and IV shows the
weights were assigned to factors in relation to quality for SPSS results. Table III shows that collected data is valid
interpretation of data. Weights are in the range of 1 to 9. 100% .
One (1) to four (4) is in low range, four (4) to seven (7) is TABLE III
CASE PROCESSING SUMMARY
in medium range, and seven (7) to nine (9) is in the high
N %
range.
Cases Valid 100 100.0
A survey was conducted by distributing a developed
Excludeda 0.00 0.00
questionnaire to different construction practioners. A Total 100 100.0
total of 160 questionnaires were distributed through a
List wise detection based on all variables in the
emails and mail. Also interviews were conducted with procedure
few respondents. All the respondents approached were Table IV shows the reliability of data. The data is
contractors of different classes such as Class A, Class B, reliable when alpha value is higher than 0.70. As the
Class 1, and Class 2. About 110 questionnaires were value of alpha is 0.830, so data is highly reliable.
received out of which 9 were discarded due to lack of TABLE IV
information. So the total response ratio of collected RELIABILITY STATISTICS
questionnaires is 63.125 %. The Table II shows the Cronbach’s Cronbach’s Alpha Based on N of
Alpha Standardized items items
information about questionnaire responses.
.880 .883 27
TABLE II
QUESTIONNAIRE RESPONSES
Category Designation Experienc Number B. Independent t-test for response agreement
of of e (Years) of It is important to check whether there are conflicts in
contractor Respondent Response the views of respondents or not. So for this reason
s s independent t-test was conducted with the help of SPSS
Class A Project 13-16 software. Randomly, two questionnaires were selected
Manager 11 from each category. The Table V shows the t-test results.
Quantity 13-15 TABLE V
Surveyors 5 INDEPENDENT T-TEST RESULTS
Project 12-15 Categories t-test P-value
Engineer 8 CA-CB -0.526 0.602
Class B Project 10-14
CA-C1 0.825 0.415
Manager 13
Project 8-11 CA-C2 -1.687 0.100
Engineer 14 CB-C1 -1.220 0.230
Procurement 7-10 CB- C2 -2.009 0.052
Manager 5 C1-C2 1.215 0.232
Class 1 Project 6-9
Manager 10 The t-test is insignificant because all values of “P” as
Project 8-10 shown in Table V are less than 0.05, so we conclude that
Engineer 10 there are no conflicts on rating of factors among the
General 14-16 different respondent’s.
Director 5 IV. DATA ANALYSIS
Class 2 Project 10-13 To easily compare the factors with international
Manager 9 standards and with global construction parameters, the
Project 7-10
weighted mean method is used. The first step towards
Engineer 11
Total analysis is to evaluate and assess the data, for that
101 reseaon chi-square and descriptive statistical methods are
A. Cronbach’s alpha test for data validation used.
The data were collected independently from different
a. Weighted Mean Method (WMM)
respondents at different designation and from different
In this method weights are assigned to each value of
organizations. So it is important to check the validity and
data that have some importance over the other. As in

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 Technical Journal, University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Taxila, Pakistan Vol. 20(SI) No.II(S)-2015

current research questionnaires are collected from Problem solving 18.000 0.003 7.0462
respondents with changing experience. So weights are PC-1 Preparation 23.400 0.003 6.9646
assigned to each questionnaire based on years of Bad Weather 20.667 0.004 6.9030
experience respondent have in the construction sector. Bureaucracy and Political 18.533 0.005
The generalized formula is shown below in (1). Influence 6.8974
WMM=∑(fi*ni) / ∑ni (1) Cash Flow 19.067 0.008
6.8845
Where “fi” represent the weight assigned by ith Funding 19.800 0.011
respondent, and “ni” shows the experience of ith 6.8337
respondent rating the factor fi. Low Bid 16.933 0.018
6.8037
The calculation based on weighted mean method is Financial Capability of 13.400 0.037
shown in Table VI Contractor 6.6490
b. Chi-square analysis Management Team of 16.200 0.04
The chi-square test is generally used to check the Contractor 6.6351
dependency of two variables. The test is significant when Law and Order Situation 12.467 0.052 6.4594
P-value is less than 0.05, while less significant when Trust with supplier 15.000 0.059 6.4488
Risk allocation 12.133 0.096
greater than 0.05. For present research, Chi-square was 6.3252
performed to check the level of significance of identified Inflation 13.200 0.105 6.1748
factors on quality. Hypothesis were developed to identify Incentive Mechanism 12.600 0.126
5.9548
the level of significance and ranked the factors based on
Mutual Objective 12.600 0.126 5.9238
P- values of Chi-square.
No blame Culture 6.333 0.176
Test of Hypothesis: General hypothesis is made relating 5.9042
quality to other factors. Pain and Gain sharing 10.00 0.189 5.9003
Null Hypothesis H0: The relation between quality and Benefit shared 8.400 0.299
5.6975
identified factors is less significant. V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Alternate Hypothesis H1: The relation between quality For discussion purposes, we selected top six factors
and identified factors is highly significant based on chi-square hypothesis and WMM as shown in
For P- values less than 0.05 null hypothesis (H0) is Figure 1. The selected factors have “P” values of zero
rejected, while the alternative hypothesis (H1) are based on chi-square analysis, while different values based
accepted. For P-values greater than 0.05 alternate on WMM. The WMM value of Continuous Improvement
hypothesis (H1) is rejected, while null hypothesis (H0) is 7.7185, Joint Working is 7.6651, Communication is
are accepted. The hypotheses are applied to results shown 7.6006, technical person availability is 7.5511, ISO
in Table VI. certification is 7.2613 and procurement unit of the
TABLE VI
FACTORS RANKING
contractor is 7.1559.
Factors Chi- P- WMM
Square value Ranking of factors based
on Chi-square and WMM
Continuous Improvement 31.200 0 7.7185 WMM P-Value
Joint Working 53.067 0 7.6651
Communication 28.333 0 7.6006 Procurement Unit of… 7.1559
0.001
Technical Person 24.133 0 ISO certification 7.2613
Availability 7.5511 0
Technical Person… 0 7.5511
ISO certification 22.400 0 7.2613 Communication 7.6006
0
Procurement Unit of 22.733 0.001 Joint working 0 7.6651
Contractor 7.1559 Continuous… 0 7.7185
Shortage of 24.400 0.001
Material/Equipment 7.1293 Figure. 1 Ranking of factors based on Chi-square and WMM
Escalation of Material 22.267 0.002
prices 7.1104 Continuous improvement focuses on quality and
Performance 19.467 0.003 7.1513
efficiency of the process. It is not an individual
Measurement

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