Development of a framework of critical success factors (CSFs) for effective integrated design team delivery in Malaysian IBS projects

Malaysia, like any other developing country, considers the construction industry as one of the main contributors to its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It is currently facing a housing shortfall crisis. Due to the combination of infamous problems associated with the construction industry, such as fragmentation, lack of productivity and quality, cost and time overrun etc, the Malaysian Government proposed industrialisation technology 40 years ago as a solution, more commonly referred to as Industrialised Building System (IBS). However, the level of implementation of IBS is still below government target. A lack of integration among IBS stakeholders during the design stage has been identified as one of the main contributory barrier. Many industry-led reports suggested that the transformation process of the traditional modus operand! towards an integrated approach is pertinent. As a response to this challenge, and consistent with the needs of the construction industry to be capable of delivering predictable and quality projects, therefore, this research aims to develop a framework of critical success factors (CSFs) for effective integrated design team delivery in Malaysian IBS projects. In doing so, this research identified the problems and gaps in current practice and knowledge of Malaysian IBS projects (Chapter 2), followed by the identification of best practice of frameworks, tools, principles and concepts towards effective integrated team practice (Chapter 3). A series of industry workshops with multidisciplinary Malaysian IBS experts have been conducted purposely for data collection and validation process guided by the research design and methodology approach of this thesis (Chapter 4). The analysis of data from Workshop 1 (Chapter 5) has been combined with factors identified in the literature review in order to develop a framework of critical success factors (CSFs) for effective integrated design team delivery in Malaysian IBS projects (Chapter 6). Finally, the framework of CSFs is validated by further Malaysian IBS industrialists during a Validation Workshop. The final framework can be used as a term of reference for both Malaysian IBS practitioners and academics towards achieving integrated IBS design team practice.