The management of quality in the Maltese construction industry : a contractors' perspective

Abstract

The importance of quality in every aspect of our life is undisputed. Customers are always in search of ever higher quality standards and better products. The last fifty years have witnessed great advances in the field of quality management particularly in the manufacturing and services sectors. Construction on the other hand has been slow to adopt techniques that have already been proven to improve quality performance in other sectors. Such techniques include the control of processes, the elimination of waste and the prevention of defects before they happen. As the industry's clients are moving forward and are demanding ever more complex and innovative constructions executed to high quality standards and within budget and schedule, the management practices in use within the constructor industry are being questioned. With Malta's growing demand for large scale developments, the performance of the island's construction companies and their ability to meet the expectations of their customers is under the spotlight. This research focused on how the sector of Malta's largest construction contractors define quality and explores their management structures and the systems used to achieve it. The barriers experienced by these contractors in their quest for quality were also explored. The primary source of data for this qualitative research was obtained through semi-structured interviews with five of the largest construction companies in Malta and a case study involving a specific construction project undertaken by one of the five contractors interviewed. The findings of the semi structured interviews were compared to the results of the case study and conclusions were drawn. This research revealed that contractors in Malta generally still rely on reactive measures of quality control based on detection methods such as supervision and testing where poor quality is detected after it happens rather than on proactive measures such as quality assurance where procedures and systems are in place to ensure that defects and poor quality do not happen in the first place. Furthermore, contractors generally have been found to treat quality control and quality assurance on a job by job basis and often adopt measures that do not promote quality as an intrinsic part of their organisation. Although all contractors claimed that they put quality matters at the top of their agenda, yet the research shows that their concept of quality is still largely focused on conformance to specifications of the product while neglecting the importance of quality of service rendered to the customer, both during the implementation process and after hand over. The research also concluded that the majority of the contractors interviewed do not have a quality management system in place and rely almost entirely on the skill and ability of their individual site supervisors for the implementation of quality on their projects. This system does not guarantee a consistent level of quality achievement and there is no opportunity for intra firm learning and knowledge sharing within the organisation which is important for improvement. The contractors interviewed cited a number of barriers to quality improvement which include skill and labour shortages, price sensitivity, excessively short project time frames, intensive competition and the black economy. This research analysed these bamers and made recommendations for their mitigation.