An investigation into developing productive construction environments to improve quality performance in Australian building construction

Construction performance has attracted criticism from all corners over the past few decades. Quality issues plaguing construction performance has been a popular theme amongst investigations of productivity, culture and construction conditions. Rework costs are at similar levels with industry profit margins and the causes of defects are wide ranging. While investigations to date have contributed to advancing the body of knowledge in many disciplines, lack of attention to improvements at subcontractor level has contributed to limited success to date in effecting actual change in construction projects. This research aimed to enhance quality performance focusing on fostering a customer-supplier relationship between trade subcontractors, changing management and worker attitude to identifying and rectifying defects at source and recognising quality outputs through relevant reward mechanisms.An Action Research approach using baseline survey results, semi-structured interviews, examination of project documents and participating in construction coordination activities across six building projects was used for assessing the specific construction conditions affecting the construction face at subcontractor level. This diagnosis phase confirmed the lack of recognition of the following trade as a customer by preceding trade subcontractors despite high interdependence on a number of service quality aspects between trades. The results also confirmed the worker attitude and lack of a defect minimisation framework and tools resulting in the current practice of identifying and fixing defects at handover. Other characteristics include the desire for a stronger clan environment, expectations in recognition of quality performance and support services provision. Interventions using Trade Start-up Check process and Defect Incident Record process were implemented on a number of projects with tools refined with each site and improvement measured. Collectively, the processes resulted in increased focus on the following trade as a customer, improvements in the provision of several service quality dimensions between trade subcontractors, early identification of defects and completion of rework resulting in a shorter rework loop and cost savings and a shift towards a clan orientation.This exploratory investigation provides a significant first step towards effecting improvement at subcontractor level by focusing on the product flow relationship between trade subcontractors and identifying and fixing defects at source.