AN ASSESSMENT OF QUALITY PERFORMANCE IN CONSTRUCTION USING CLIENTS’ PERSPECTIVES OF CONTRACTORS’ PROJECT-LEVEL QUALITY PERFORMANCE

A strong quality culture has been recognized to be an important prerequisite to the achievement of sustained competitive advantage through the continuous delivery of
high quality products and services as well as clients’/end-users’ satisfaction. The last decade however exposed the declining level of clients’ satisfaction from the built
facilities as a result of poor quality performance in addition to the perennial problems of time and cost overruns in the Nigerian construction industry. This has necessitated
a radical change in industry practice in order to improve the quality of construction processes and the level of clients’ satisfaction arising therefrom by devising
methodology for evaluating the quality performance of the contractors. This paper identified quality attributes relevant to the construction process and proposed a quality
performance evaluation model that covers both the corporate and operational levels of a construction project. The paper also implemented the framework in the form of an investigative survey into the quality performance of building contractors in Nigeria as perceived by client organisations. The assessment was based on clients’ perception of the Contractor Quality Practices (CQP) based on the identified quality attributes.Seventy two (72) client organisations comprising of government, semi-government
and private clients assessed the quality performance of eighteen (18) contractors. The responses were ranked and analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to measure the
degree to which the three categories of clients agree on their assessment of CQP. The results reveal that the three categories of clients generally agree on their assessment,
indicating a general consistency in the CQP amongst the contractors. The proposed contractors’ quality performance evaluation model can be used in both contractor pre-qualification and/or selection systems.