Building a Framework for Material Supply Management for Construction Projects in West Bank
Date
2017-01-16
Authors
بدوي, شموع فواز بدوي
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
جامعة النجاح الوطنية
Abstract
Construction industry sector is considered as one of the most important sectors in the world economy for its broad and intense overlap with other sectors of industry. As construction industry is facing a significant growth in construction projects it becomes necessary to focus on improving this sector.
Construction sector in West Bank faces many serious challenges that cause performance- related problems which refers to the complexity of construction projects, that make it necessary to search for modern management approaches for construction industry.
The supply chain management approach is a new field, which its techniques had been successfully implemented by various construction companies around the world. The application of supply chain management on construction projects include labor, materials, equipments, subcontracting, and a finished project and profitability. This study focuses on the process of construction materials supply for construction projects in West Bank. that starts with producing designs and plans and ends with a set of activities in the construction site.
In accordance with ultimate goal of material supply chain management, this study aims to adopt the material supply chain management concepts, and assess and investigate the current practices of these concepts in construction project management in West Bank, as well as building a conceptual framework for material supply chain management for construction projects in West Bank.
Mixed methodology of both qualitative and quantitative research approaches are used to conduct this study. Qualitative data were collected by conducting interviews with CEO’s, project managers, site engineers, or contractors. A survey is done by distributing questionnaires to contracting companies in West Bank to gather the quantitative part of the data.
The analysis of the collected data indicates that there are problems in material supply that affect the companies’ performance, material supply chain management is not effectively applied, and certainly there is a need for adopting new management approaches for material supply in construction projects to handle these problems. This was confirmed by the results which show that implementing material supply chain management will positively affect companies’ performance.