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In the context of the construction industry, certain role-players and stakeholders affect the quality-balance in the following areas of project development:

1. Client: the aims, purpose and location of project
2. Designers: the design and specification. "The designer is tasked to produce the 'best' design out of many alternatives, i.e. the 'what', but cannot ignore the 'why', i.e. the overall worth of the project. Thus both technical procedures and evaluation procedures are needed. The latter comprise both economic analyses, typically of the classic investment appraisal type and decision-making techniques" (Summers, Boxton & Stephenson, 1998:42).
3. Cost engineers and quantity surveyors: cost design, cost planning, cost control, cost assessment and cost budgeting: For effective cost design, cost planning and cost control, it is essential that the cost professionals work in close co-operation with the owner and design consultants. It happens more often than not, that the budget guides the outcome of a project thus stressing the importance of cost design
4. Communities: community interests and the environment
5. Manufacturers: materials and components supplies
6. Contractors and subcontractors: construction and testing
7. Users: use of the finished structures and their subsequent repair and maintenance (Gunning, 1987:376-378

The construction industry, the contractor and quality

Although the principles of producing quality products are universal, it must be realized that the construction industry differs in many aspects from other manufacturing industries.

Differences between factory and construction site cannot be ignored. There are special factors which have to be taken into account, for example:

• Susceptibility to weather
• Mobility of labour
• Uniqueness of projects.

These realities undoubtedly make the introduction of quality management difficult in comparison with other industries, where stricter control of production processes is more defined.

Knowledge of the differences between construction projects and manufactured products assists the professional responsible for quality management, quality assessment and quality control in producing a project approaching the required standards of quality.

In greater detail, these are the following:

1. Most building projects are unique
2. A building site is unique in terms of environment and conditions
3. The life cycle of a building project from inception to completion is longer than that of most manufactured products, and a building continues to evolve throughout its long life cycle in terms of both time and circumstance
4. The mobility of design and construction staff makes production difficult to control
5. There are few clearly evolved, tested and precise standards for the evaluation of overall design and construction quality
6. Participants in the design and construction processes are usually different from project to project
7. Feedback from the users of buildings to designers may be remote from the actual time of design and construction
8. Conflicting costing systems exist between design/construction processes and maintenance expenditure. Without the unification or compatibility of these two stages, real quality costs cannot be calculated
9. The respective role of communities and the environment are becoming more important in the development of new projects
10. There is a lack of integrated action between designers and builders
11. Another facet is the diverse delegation of responsibility for supervision work on construction sites (Dalton, 1987:363).

Various types of procurement systems in the construction industry have also evolved and in recent years a trend towards innovation in contract administration has developed. These phenomena have been caused by extensive failures in past projects. Major disappointments in project performance were caused by extensive delays in planned schedules, cost overruns, serious problems associated with quality assurance and an increased number of claims and litigation proceedings. The consumer (the public) does not obtain the best product for money (Herbsman, Ellis, 1991:150; Naoum & Langford, 1987:45) (Figure 4).

(Naoum & Langford, 1987:45)

If this situation exists in the construction industry in South Africa, problems should be examined in strategic terms, assessing the aims, goals and value systems of the industry and its allied professions.

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+ site created on : 19 May, 1997 + site updated on : 06 May, 2010 +