A framework for evaluating material management performance in Jordanian concrete building projects.

The rapid growth of the construction sector in the Arab region of the Middle East, particular in Jordan, is expected to attract investments worth 21 billion U.S. dollars over the next five years (2012 - 2017). This growth has contributed to the increasing number and types of large-scale projects currently being undertaken, and also increased the use of building materials and the requirement for effective and efficient materials management services to ensure overall construction process performance. Studies have indicated that materials in building projects constitute about 60% of total project cost and control 80% of the project schedule. Inefficient materials management may therefore lead to an increase of 50% in work hours. Hence, there is a pressing need for measuring the effectiveness of the Construction Materials Management (CMM) process to provide a basis for the follow-up, and for evaluating and analysing the current performance of processes. The literature review of previous work, and pilot studies carried out to date, confirm that the effectiveness of the construction materials management process, and extent to which it meets the needs and expectations of construction operations has not been adequately defined or measured within building projects.The primary aim of this research is therefore to establish a set of uniform measures for evaluating the Effectiveness of Construction Materials Management Performance (ECMMP), and to develop a framework for use within large-scale concrete building projects in Jordan. The work adopts a mixed research methodological approach involving literature review and both qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques. The literature review process essentially explored the theory, and typical workflow diagram(s), to establish a set of measures that assess the effectiveness of material management performance in typical building construction projects. Within the research main investigation, a case study project was also introduced where site visits and semi-structured interviews were carried out to establish a practical workflow diagram to reflect real-life CMM processes within Jordanian large-scale concrete building projects. This also included the identification of a set of measures to be used for evaluating the ECMMP on those building projects (Practical Effectiveness-Measures; P.E.Ms).Based on the data collection and cross-cases analysis, a framework was developed to integrate practical effectiveness-measures within the practical workflow diagram of the CMM process, allowing an operational mechanism to communicate and operationalize those uniform measures within the workflow process (ECMMP Framework). This was followed by a framework validation designed to evaluate the functionality and appropriateness of the developed ECMMP through two techniques of formative and summative evaluations. The ECMMP framework provides a new approach and methodology for evaluating, periodically and systematically, the effectiveness of the materials management performance. The framework not only brings about improvements in managing materials within Jordanian large-scale concrete building projects, but establishes a basis for unified standard benchmarking of performance for the materials management process in the Arab Construction Industry.