The role of the supply chain in elimination and reduction of construction rework and defects: An action research approach

During the past six years Ireland suffered a catastrophic economic reverse that impacted disproportionately on the construction industry, leading to a circa 80% reduction in output. The results of this have been bankruptcy, unemployment and bad debt. The changed environment has spurred the contractors to attach ever greater emphasis to production efficiency and cost reduction as a means of survival. An Action Research (AR) approach was used in this research to focus on improving the strategies adopted by a SME contractor for the control of defects in its supply chain. It is conservatively estimated in the literature that rework typically accounts for circa 5% of total project costs. Such activity is clearly wasteful and presents an obvious target to address. The AR intervention is at the diagnosing stage and involved examination of work on a pilot site, analysis of contract documents, including drawings, snag lists and specifications and semi-structured interviews with supply chain members. The results indicate the potential for the supply chain participants to both identify the root cause of defects and propose solutions, in terms of best practice to avoid future reoccurrence. Another key finding was the lack of any collaborative forums to contribute to production improvement and cost reduction. Additionally the processes, used to collect, manage and disseminate data on defects were found to be unstructured and uncoordinated, indicating scope for development of more useful methods. The research indicates good understanding of the potential benefits for supply chain collaboration but suggests the tools and knowledge to collaborate are currently lacking in the Irish SME sector.