Quality management in the construction of low-cost houses in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.
Date
2018
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Several studies have revealed that the quality of construction projects in South Africa has long
been of concern, as it has been found to be below par. This is evidenced in the reports of poor
project performance, poorly implementation processes or worse still, projects delivered at
unexpected costs to clients. Both the private and public-sector clients are dissatisfied with the
quality of workmanship of the contractors around the country. The most critical issue is that
rectification of this sub-standard construction work, especially on many of the low-cost housing
projects throughout South Africa, has left the government with huge bills of billions of rands.
The main objective of this study was to examine the challenges and benefits of quality
management implementation in the construction of low-cost houses in the Amathole Region
of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Expert judgemental or purposive sampling method
was used to select 75 construction industry professionals for the purposes of conducting this
study. Data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire. The results revealed that
the construction companies of low-cost houses in Amathole had challenges in managing
quality, as evidenced by the projects contribution to the re-work costs that have racked in
millions of rands. The current quality management operational systems are fraught with lack
of proper communication, use of unskilled labour by the construction companies, as well as
difficulties in process implementation. However, the results indicated that the construction
companies’ professionals did not find the deficient designs, lack of technical expertise and
projects failure being challenging the management of quality at the Amathole low-cost housing
projects. The current strategies employed by the construction companies of low-cost houses at
Amathole were largely driven by project economy, project timelines and employee buy-in. The
results also indicated that focus on these outcomes has resulted in less attention to strategic
alignment, clear definition of projects and the overall scope, continuous training and proper
planning, as the importance of these strategies was disregarded. The results also indicated that
the quality management personnel were not adequately or well-resourced in terms of proper
management systems, empowerment in terms of decision-making autonomy, however fairly
resourced in terms of quality site visit time, site meetings and best practices benchmarking.
The results indicated that overall, the quality management personnel were not well-resourced.
To improve on the effectiveness of the current quality management strategies employed, the
results indicated that the respondents significantly supported the adoption of ISO certification
compliance in future as the perceived benefits of doing that were highly rated. The study
recommended the adoption of ISO certification as a quality management system or overall
strategy to curb poor workmanship and defects and save the government rework costs that have
cost billions of rands throughout the country.
Description
Maters Degree. University of Kwazulu-Natal, Durban.