Development of a road quality assurance measurement tool in construction projects

This paper aims to explore South African construction project deliveries' to local communities built by small and medium enterprise (SME) contractor. The objective was to explore construction project delivery practice within the construction sector with the intention of developing a road quality assurance measurement tool specifically for construction organisations. A questionnaire was administered to 160 randomly-selected project/construction managers, architects, quantity surveyors, client/managers and South African local government administrators. Quantitative methods of data analysis were used to analyse data gathered from the self-administered questionnaires from South African road construction projects. This paper concludes by showing that the SME construction project lacks strategic planning and poor quality of construction project delivery. Inadequate development and quality control has been identified as a key source of inadequacy. The findings suggest that the SME construction organisations would benefit from adopting a program of product quality for the construction of long-term relationships with local authorities and communities. Developing road quality assurance process of SME construction organisations also helps to community flexibility and overall continuous process improvement. Conversely, at present, little research has been conducted on how SME construction organisations deal with the poor quality of road projects.