Schultz, C S; Jørgensen, K; Bonke, S and Rasmussen, G M G (2015) Building defects in Danish construction: Project characteristics influencing the occurrence of defects at handover. Architectural Engineering and Design Management, 11(6), pp. 423-439. ISSN 1745-2007
Abstract
Defects in construction have gained much attention from both the public and academia. Danish construction is no exception and a number of political initiatives have been established to address the unsatisfying amounts of defects. One of the political initiatives, benchmarking, collects and provides information from building projects on defects at handover to clients and on a number of project characteristics. This article utilizes the substantial amount of data from the benchmarking initiative to examine which project characteristics differentiate building projects with none or few cosmetic defects from those with many and/or serious defects. The article reviews the results from studying two quantitative data sets: (I) benchmarking data from 329 building projects and 621 contracts and (II) questionnaire data from an electronic survey comprising 130 contractors. This study provides in-depth knowledge about correlations between project characteristics and the extent of defects measured at handover. Results show statistically significant differences between building projects characterized by no or few defects compared with building projects with many and/or serious defects. Determining characteristics are the planning of budgetary conditions, time schedules and early, continuous quality control. Furthermore, this study also indicates collaboration between stakeholders plus skills and safety initiatives as having a positive influence on the performance measured as defects at handover.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | building defects; handover process; management; project characteristics; quality |
| Index terms: | academia, questionnaire, collaboration, benchmarking, quality control, building defect, survey |
| Subjects: | performance measurement, management, educational institutions, data collection methods, project delivery, professional practice |
| Topics: | Research Practice, Organizational Design, Education, Quality Management, Design Practice |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCEA |
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