Analysis of Factors Affecting Construction Quality: A Case Study Of ERRA Projects in Rawalakot District – AJK

Abstract

Almost 8 years back, it was the morning of October the 8th – 2005, 8:50 AM (PST), when Mother Nature trembled the north of Pakistan. It was an earthquake of magnitude 7.6 affecting the lives of 3.5 million people in terms of massive loss to precious lives and transforming buildings/infrastructure into dust & debris. To this the Government & people of Pakistan, humanitarian organizations and international community immediately and actively participated in rescue activities and successfully completed the relief and recovery phase. But then, all these initial efforts had to be followed by further strengthening of rehabilitation & reconstruction process. It was surely not possible to cope with such a huge disaster without the establishment of a professional body at national level, under the umbrella of which a systematic approach could be adopted for coordinating and integrating all the efforts. In view of all these circumstances, Government of Pakistan established “Earthquake Reconstruction & Rehabilitation Authority” (ERRA) on 24th of October 2005 to take up the challenging massive task of rebuilding in affected areas. Meanwhile the need was also felt for the establishment of dedicated units within the provincial governments down to the district levels in order to strengthen the government by managing and overseeing the rehabilitation and reconstruction activities. The establishment of these bodies at district levels was with a view that they being on the front line could more effectively highlight the strengths as well as weaknesses with a basic aim of suggesting improvements for incorporating timely corrections during the ongoing construction process and over project implementation.The reconstruction and rehabilitation activities were decided to be executed in 9 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Azad Jammu & Kashmir, categorized into 11 different sectors, consisting of over 14,000 projects, out of which ERRA currently claims to have completed approximately 66% of the total projects. There has been a lot of criticism on the outcomes of ERRA and media has also been projecting about its ineffectiveness time and again, yet, no professional research has yet been carried out addressing any possible shortfalls related to construction management with their effects on construction quality and most importantly suggesting any suitable recommendations that could have positively contributed towards the betterment and improvement of ERRA’s productivity Therefore the basic aim for carrying out this study was to identify the factors affecting construction quality and giving recommendations positively contributing towards productivity of ERRA and also for dealing more effectively with such a disaster in future (God forbid) w.r.t construction quality. The research was carried out in four basic phases i.e. 1st Phase involved in- depth literature review supporting research aims & objectives and preliminary framework development. 2nd Phase involved developing of preliminary questionnaire and carrying out a pilot survey for its further improvement before carrying out a survey. 3rd Phase involved conduct of a full scale survey to get feedback through questionnaire, establishment of facts & figures supported by discussion/interviews and practical examples of quality of construction on physically on ground projects to validate the objectives of the research. And in the 4th Phase, based on final results achieved from data analysis, conclusions followed by some recommendations were made. A total of 30 potential factors affecting the construction quality were considered in questionnaire based survey, out of which 10 most significant factors affecting the construction quality highlighted as result of field survey were: shortage of funds and stoppage in its smooth flow, excessive subletting of projects, slow process of land acquisition later making it difficult for the contractors to meet deadlines, initial preparation of technical documents done without ground survey, lack of coordination between stakeholders, lack of power/authority to stop the faulty work, grouping of small projects into large packages, awarding contracts to financially strong but technically weak contractors, contractors undertaking work beyond their capacity and change in policies and rules with change in command.