Barriers and Benefits of Total Quality Management in the Construction Industry: Evidence from Turkish Contractors

ABSRACT Implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM) in the construction industry promises several benefits such as more repeat customers, reduced rework, improved employee job satisfaction, higher productivity, improved budget performance, improved schedule performance, better chances in bidding process with pre-qualification, increased market share, etc. Yet, there are several barriers to the extensive deployment of TQM in the construction industry. The construction industry is different from other industries in many aspects such as one one-of-a-kind product, lack of top management’s leadership and support, unqualified workforce, lack of effective teams, etc. It is commonly believed that TQM cannot be successfully implemented due to these peculiarities. Moreover, many construction companies consider quality programs as extra cost because of the fact that they are not totally aware of that the cost of nonconformance to quality is much higher than that of operating a quality program. This paper aims to investigate the potential benefits derived from implementing TQM and barriers to the extensive implementation of TQM in the construction industry. For this purpose, a questionnaire was designed and delivered to 120 large-scaled Turkish contractors, who are the members of Turkish Contractors Association (TCA). Out of these 120 contractors, 80 returned duly completed questionnaires. The survey results revealed that contractors are aware of the benefits of TQM implementation but there are still several barriers to implementation. According to the survey results, lack of top management’s support, commitment and leadership are the three most important barriers to TQM implementation.