Building Construction Clients’ Design Consultant and Contractor Selection Criteria Versus Post-Occupancy Satisfaction Levels

Abstract

In today’s competitive building construction markets, achieving clients’ satisfaction is of utmost importance. The choice of a design consultant and a contractor for a building project has a crucial influence on the post-occupancy satisfaction of the client. Hence, this study provides insights into private building construction clients’ perceptions of a set of criteria contributing to their selections of design consultant and contractor together with the resulting post-occupancy overall client satisfaction levels eventually reached, by presenting survey findings of 330 clients in North Cyprus construction market. Unlike previous studies, the current study combined all the interrelated and vital stages of design consultant and contractor selection with post-occupancy client satisfaction levels. A further contribution is differentiating among various types of client groups’ behaviors in each of the three specified stages. Clients in different categories had distinct approach differences in selection stages, and different post-occupancy satisfaction values indicating that firms may benefit from market segmentation. “Residential” and “<120,000£” type building clients were the least satisfied groups, while “project execution stage” and “functionality” emerged as major features creating dissatisfaction. The findings revealed the importance attached by the clients to “references about the firm” in the selection stages and low client satisfaction with the completed projects. Regression analysis findings revealed different design consultant and contractor selection factors predicting overall clients’ satisfaction while assigning high importance to the “cost-effectiveness approach of the firm” emerged as the only strong predictor of dissatisfaction. This study provides a guide for building construction clients to attain higher post-occupancy satisfaction and assists design consultants and contractors in adopting specific customer-focused strategies.

House Type Specification for Housing Development Project Using Machine Learning Techniques: A Study From Bangkok Metropolitan Region, Thailand

“…The specification of a housing development project is an essential step as it establishes the objectives that guide the subsequent phases of the workflow. Specifying housing types will aid real estate entrepreneurs in creating a project development policy that is more responsive to the needs of residents (Ching, 2023;Egemen, 2022;Henilane, 2016). For housing estate projects, entrepreneurs need to acquire and verify land that meets their plans before exactly specifying any physical characteristics, considering it a critical factor in the real estate development process (Terra Media and Consulting, 2017).…”