The study aims at evaluating and comparing service quality of consultancy firms who provide professional services in building projects in Nigeria. The article seeks to address the general perceptions of dissatisfaction with the quality of services in order to enhance performance of building projects and ensure competitiveness in the industry. A cross-sectional survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire as an instrument of data collection. The population of the study consisted of 488 representatives of public and private clients with a sample size of 385. Data were analysed using weighted mean and paired-sample t-test to determine the severity of differences in the expected service quality and perceived service quality. The result shows significant differences between the expected service quality and perceived service quality in structural engineering, mechanical/electrical engineering and quantity surveying services along all the dimensions of service quality. However, "Tangibles" dimension of architectural services had no positive differences in the service quality, but had differences in "Responsiveness", "Empathy", "Reliability" and "Assurance" dimensions. The results imply that professional service providers require fundamental improvement in their services to their clients. This study offers an opportunity for consultancy firms to evolve global best practices by creating and maintaining high service quality as a team.
Clients have expressed dissatisfaction about services of professionals as a result of poor quality of service and errors in documentations resulting into overrunning project cost and delayed completion. This study investigated the influences of firms’ types, size of firms and experience of firms on provision of professional services of Architectural firms in the process of meeting the expectations of the client. Questionnaires was used to collect data for the study through random sampling. The results of ANOVA showed that firm types had no significance on services across the stages of service, firm size showed significance while the experience of the firm showed significance across the inception and the design stages. Multiple regression analysis showed that the variables cumulatively explained 3.9% (at p < 0.05) of the variance in the overall professional services of architectural firms. Among the variables, only the firm size showed a significant impact on the overall professional services with a p-value of 0.003. The firm type and experience of firm had no impact on the overall professional services. The findings serve as a guide to the clients in making choice of consultancy firms for their project, and as a guide to the consultancy firms in order to remain competitive in the globalized industry. Keywords: Architectural firms, Building Projects, Clients, Firms’ Characteristics, Professional Services
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