1 AIT Asian Institute of Technology

Construction process improvement for a mass housing project : a case of pre-cast housing construction

AuthorPradhan, Pratigya
Call NumberAIT Thesis no.CM-05-14
Subject(s)House construction

NoteA thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Engineering, School of Engineering and Technology
PublisherAsian Institute of Technology
AbstractAn important measure of success in the management of construction projects is the achievement of project within the prescribed time scale. Although the importance of time is realized, many projects fail to achieve them. Specially, in client driven projects like mass housing where maintaining quality and in schedule is the major issue, this challenge becomes more prominent. The major objective of this thesis is to shorten the time and improve the quality in housing projects. The first step was to identify the factors causing delay and quality degradation. Structured questionnaire were administered in nine of the sites with same organizational systems and building types but varying in the scale. Fifteen problems grouped in seven categories of problematic areas were ranked from 36 respondents from Managerial level (including project managers and site engineers) and 54 respondents from foremen level. Each of the problems was ranked regarding, frequency of occurrence, it impact on delay and impact on quality on the project. Two hypotheses were formulated to detect the perception of a particular problem in delay of a project and quality problem in the project considering the difference in perception of managers and foremen. In order to detect the operational problems regarding detail sequence of works and other detail problems during the construction, construction process diagnosis was performed for detail activities for a particular building type (most commonly constructed) in a selected site having greatest investments among the sites. These basically include the process and sequence study of work along with the time study, labor and equipment information were collected for each of the activities. During the study observations reinforced by informal interview, observations were made in order to determine the major and minor delay factors. Further, work sampling of the selected activities of work packages, were performed for four different period of time of a day i.e. early morning, late morning, afternoon and evening, the number of samples being collected in average 340 activities and 930 for overall construction scenario. The results showed that the most problematic issues affecting delay as well as quality degradation were problem in manpower and that in material. Problem in co-ordination and finance also had moderate impact on the delay and quality degradation of the project. Finally, suggestions for construction process improvement were proposed in terms of management level and improvement on construction process and on-site activities and their sequencing
Year2005
TypeThesis
SchoolSchool of Engineering and Technology (SET)
DepartmentDepartment of Civil and Infrastucture Engineering (DCIE)
Academic Program/FoSConstruction Engineering and Infrastructure Management (CM)
Chairperson(s)Ogunlana, Stephen 0.;
Examination Committee(s)Chotchai Charoenngam;Barry, William J.;
Scholarship Donor(s)Asian Institute of Technology (Partial Scholarship);Government of Austria
DegreeThesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2005


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