Factors affecting defects occurrence in the construction stage of residential buildings in Gaza Strip

Abstract

The building defects are always of great concern for construction industry as they cause delays before handing over and increase maintenance costs during occupancy of the buildings. Due to the rapid development and population growth in Gaza Strip, many residential buildings and housing projects are being constructed in a short space of time, especially after Gaza war in 2014. Therefore, many errors and defects are expected to arise during the construction stage. The aim of this paper is to identify and rank the factors affecting the defects occurrence in the construction stage of the residential buildings in Gaza Strip. A survey was conducted in 134 randomly selected engineers working for engineering offices as design engineers, supervisors and project managers in Gaza Strip. The study revealed five most effective main factors during the construction stage, namely construction materials, factors due to inspections, factors due to construction equipment, factors due to constructions and factors due to construction management, respectively. The most important factors in each group were poor soil compaction, exceeding the allowable limits of verticality of the structural elements, insufficient reinforcement concrete cover, owner's negligence of inspections, absence of engineer in most of construction phases, using expired material, material or component failure, using corroded or secondhand reinforcement steel, using materials not of acceptable quality and not conforming to the specifications or design and lack of required equipment. This research is the first attempt at identifying factors affecting defect occurrence in the construction stage of residential buildings of the developing countries. The findings will be useful for the construction firms and regulatory bodies to deal with the critical factors affecting defect occurrence and device such policies that improve the design and construction of residential buildings.

Factors affecting the number of building defects and the approaches to reduce their negative impacts in Malaysian public universities’ buildings

“…Ahzahar et al (2011) pointed out that the usage of materials during the construction stage expect to determine the behaviour of building defects in the future; thus, construction materials are relevant to building defects. Ahzahar et al (2011) and Tayeh et al (2020) have justified using low-quality materials during construction due to parties who intentionally reduce quality to reduce costs. This study revealed that in some of the buildings, a significant number of defects were due to inappropriate material selection concerning the existing climatic conditions and a change in the material types and specifications during the construction process.…”

“…Yacob et al (2019) focussed on establishing the relationship between factors affecting building defects and a building’s condition. Faqih et al (2020) studied factors affecting the physical condition of the building and Tayeh et al (2020) have focussed on studying the factors influencing the occurrence of defects in the construction stage. Talib et al (2014) conducted a study on factors affecting building maintenance and defects.…”

“…Specifically, building defects reduce the lifespan of buildings, affect users' safety and health and prevent the buildings from performing their functions well (Tayeh et al, 2020;Hauashdh et al, 2020). Also, the repair of building defects requires budget and time, leading to economic losses and generating waste (Hauashdh et al, 2020;Lee et al, 2018;Rotimi et al, 2015).…”

Design, Construction, and Curing Integrated Management of Defects in Finishing Works of Apartment Buildings

“…According to the previous studies on the causes of building defects, factors causing defects can largely be divided into DCC stages, as shown in Figure 2 [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]. As shown in Figure 2, causes of building defects are design errors, the selection of inappropriate materials and methods, no consideration of constructability, and insufficient design documents, etc.…”

“…As shown in Figure 2, causes of building defects are design errors, the selection of inappropriate materials and methods, no consideration of constructability, and insufficient design documents, etc. [34][35][36][37][38][39][40].…”