A study of Total Quality Management Practices in Oman’s Construction Industries

Abstract

Total quality management system considered as the best technique to be used in the construction sector after using other modern techniques that might be used in quality field such as quality control (QC), quality assurance (QA) and ISO standards which is related to construction. However, this project report explore the effectiveness of adopting Total Quality Management (TQM) practices in Oman’s construction industry. Where TQM considered as the best method that can be used to ensure getting a well-planned and successful construction projects. Tan & Abdul-Rahman (2005) explained quality management from the viewpoint of a construction industry, where quality management in construction mean maintaining the quality of the construction project work through adopting quality standards in order to gain customers’ satisfaction which will result on achieving a long term competitiveness and business continued existence for the construction industry. Harris and McCaffer (2001) explained that quality management role are not isolated in the construction company where all activities including operational and managerial processes are connected together to achieve the quality. The results of the study are gained with depends on the previous literature reviews that conducted in quality management in the Omani construction industries. The rest of the findings are obtained through a semi structured interview carried with fourteen construction projects managers and a questionnaire were distributed to 60 supervisors are working in different construction companies. The findings of the research project indicate that quality management implementation in the Omani construction projects needs to be strengthened more, where there are many problems are occurring in the Omani construction companies due to adoption of TQM, where TQM are not practiced in all of the construction industries in Oman, other quality programmes are not adopted such as Quality Assurance and ISO. However, participation of top management should be increased on the quality field in the construction industry as well as distribution of the human resources and other financial requirements should be increased to implement the total quality management techniques at construction industries.