Love, P E D (2001) Determinants of rework in Australian construction projects. PhD thesis, Monash University, Australia.
Abstract
Time and schedule overruns, quality deviations and poor safety typically plague projects in the Australian construction industry. Several government initiated reports that have criticized the industry for its fragmented nature, lack of coordination and communication between participants, adversarial contractual relationships, lack of a customer-supplier focus, price-base selection, and ineffective use of technology. Such poor management practices have contributed to time waste, unnecessary costs, increased errors, and misunderstandings, which have invariably resulted in rework occurring in projects. A lack of attention to quality management at an organisational and project level by construction organisations has resulted in rework becoming an endemic feature of the industry. The direct cost of rework has been reported to be as high as 12.4% of a project's cost. When indirect costs are also taken into account the total cost of rework can be as high as 25% of project cost. These reported figures have been based on civil and heavy engineering projects. The research presented in this thesis aimed to determine the factors that influence rework building construction projects and develop models for reducing rework at the organizational and inter-organizational (project) level. In satisfying this aim, the research was undertaken in two distinct phases. In phase one, two case studies were used to gain an understanding about how and why rework occurred in projects. A rework categorization costing system was developed and implemented to determine rework costs as well as its causes. Interviews were used to investigate why rework occurred. Rework costs were found to be 3.15% and 2.40% of each project's contract value. The causes of rework varied between projects, however, there were some commonalities identified, which included poor contract documentation, poor coordination and planning, non-implementation of quality management practices, and ineffective use of information technology (IT).
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | cost control; project management; quality control; rework |
| Index terms: | coordination, project management, costing, construction industry, quality management, quality control, determinant, implementation, schedule overrun, quality deviation, becoming, direct cost, case study, indirect cost, construction organization, information technology, contract documentation, quality management practice, cost control, construction project, management practice, contractual relationship, project cost, rework, building construction, interview |
| Subjects: | financial and cost management, project delivery, contractual arrangements, operations management, computing systems, organization, contractual relationship, data collection methods, risk assessment, quality assurance, cost management, philosophical process, industry analysis, building construction, project controls, project management theory and practice, production management, accounting and finance, economics, management |
| Topics: | Construction Technology, Research Practice, Business Strategy, Cost Management, Contract Administration, Time Control, Organizational Design, Digital Applications, Procurement, Risk Management, Project Management, Quality Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here