Constructability practices in construction industry in Muscat: case study

Abstract

This study aims to review the concept of constructability and evaluate the level of implementation of constructability practices in the construction industry in Muscat Governorate. One hundred and ninety questionnaires were distributed, and 85 complete responses were received, including 10 from owners (12%), 64 from consultants (75%) and 11 from the contractors (13%). The results showed that owners, consultants, and contractors recognize, support, and practice constructability efforts. 45% of the respondents said that constructability efforts typically begin in preconstruction planning, which shows a positive awareness that constructability efforts must start at the earliest stage of a project's life cycle. In addition, 60% of the respondents indicated that they performed constructability by following a constructability procedure during the design stage. All the respondents agreed that constructability implementation obstacles continued to exist in construction projects in Muscat and the cost and time associated with the implementation of constructability review practices are the most dominant obstacles. Although constructability has been recognized in Muscat's construction industry, the level of constructability awareness and improvement in cost and time estimation and quality requirements are developing.

The factors that affect constructability in Iraq

“…Due to the efforts of the Business Roundtable, the CII was formatted and the term constructability was used for the first time in the construction industry in the U.S. in 1986 (Pocock et al 2006). The CII defined constructability as 'the optimum use of construction knowledge and experience in planning, design, procurement, and field operations to achieve overall project objectives' (Tauriainen et al 2012;Zolfagharian and Irizarry 2017;Khan 2019;Thirion 2019;Shash and Almufadhi 2021;Al Hamadani et al 2022). From the above two definitions, it is obvious that the concept of constructability is more comprehensive than buildability, as it includes the management and design problems, while the buildability concept focuses mainly on design (Tauriainen et al 2012;Khan 2019).…”

“…According to Khan (2019), Shash andAlmufadhi (2021), andThirion (2019), there are two types of constructability benefits: qualitative and quantitative; the qualitative benefits are more safety, better communication, enhanced location accessibility, improved construction flexibility, less maintenance cost, enhanced attention on the common goal and so on; while the quantitative benefits involve improve construction cost by reducing labour, material and equipment cost, a compact time table and less engineering cost. Othman (2011), Al-Fadhli (2022 and Al Hamadani et al (2022) noticed that implementing the constructability concept in the earlier stage of the project had a good influence on the entire building process. It was clear that applying constructability through different stages of the project's life cycle had a great impact on the project cost and schedule; it would decrease the projects' duration and cost and keep them within the budget.…”

“…The essential responsibility of constructability is to convert plans and specifications into finished products (Khan 2019;Nolan and Gibson 2022). According to Zhang et al (2016), applying constructability in project design would save 1%-14% of the capital cost, while Al Hamadani et al (2022) mention that applying constructability saved 10%-20% of the total cost of the project. According to the Construction Industry Institute (CII) (2019), constructability improved to 7.1% from schedule performance and 6.1% from cost performance during project implementation and development.…”

Ranking of Variation Orders Caused by the Owners of Construction Projects in Saudi Arabia Using Statistical and Fuzzy-Based Methods

“…For instance, Amusan et al [41] used a sample size of 70 professionals to explore factors influencing the cost and time of construction projects in Nijeria. Recently, Hamadani et al [42] selected a sample size of 128 to investigate constructability practices in Muscat. An online link was provided so the respondents could receive a formal invitation and participate in the survey without giving out their personal information.…”

A Constructability Assessment Model Based on BIM in Urban Renewal Projects in Limited Lands

“…It demonstrated that the advantages of constructability are both quantitative and qualitative. The quantitative benefits of constructability are that it reduces production and manufacturing costs, the duration of the project schedule, and construction costs (labor, material, equipment) [15]. However, its qualitative benefits are that it decreases the number of issues involved in the project, improves site approachability, lessens the impact on existing productions, improves safety, minimizes repeated work, increases concentration on a common goal, increases collective understanding of the purpose/effect of individuals' involvement, improves team members' engagement with a project, etc.…”