Title: Quality management system framework for construction companies in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Authors: Bambang Trigunarsyah; Ammar Moohialdin; Muhammad Saiful Islam

Addresses: School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia ' Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Gardens Point Campus, Australia ' Department of Construction Engineering and Management, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia

Abstract: The construction sector in Saudi Arabia is the largest and fastest-growing market in the Gulf region. However, there are considerable quality service gaps that affect the overall performance of the construction projects. Achieving a high quality for construction projects is strongly associated with managing interrelated organisational processes and the company-specific practice and culture. Under this context, this paper develops a quality management system (QMS) for Saudi construction companies. The QMS is developed based on three primary sources: literature review, case studies on real-world practices of QMS implementations in Saudi Arabia and ISO 9001. The study results demonstrate that the application of the QMS needs to consider five main components: top management commitment, facilitation of QMS application, company and project-based QMS, and evaluation and correction. The proposed QMS model can equally be implemented in culturally and economically similar countries like KSA.

Keywords: construction industry; quality management system; QMS; company-based QMS; Saudi Arabia; organisational process.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPQM.2023.132262

International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management, 2023 Vol.39 No.3, pp.302 - 329

Received: 24 Mar 2021
Accepted: 30 Jul 2021
Published online: 14 Jul 2023 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article