Quality Management and Iso 9000 Standards in the Egyptian Construction Industry

Quality is considered to be one of the most critical and widely discussed issues worldwide nowadays. It is considered to be one of the key factors that affect customer satisfaction. ISO 9000 standards are the most popular and formal quality management systems that help companies in identifying and meeting their customers’ requirements and expectations. ISO 9000 certification has become a prerequisite for construction contracting companies that want to tender for contracts in most of the European Community and the Gulf area countries. The Egyptian construction industry is considered to be one of the major contributors to the Egyptian economy. However, only 59 Egyptian construction contracting companies are ISO 9000 certified out of 28,723 companies and this represents 0.21% of the total registered Egyptian construction contracting companies. This impacts negatively on the growth and development of the Egyptian construction contracting companies and on the Egyptian construction industry, as it will prevent these companies from gaining entry into new markets, tendering for new projects in these countries, utilizing their resources and competing and growing internationally and regionally as well. In addition, little research is done to address the status of ISO 9000 standards in the Egyptian construction industry has been conducted. This paper is based on the masters’ thesis research work and it investigates the status of the ISO 9000 standards in the Egyptian construction industry. A survey was conducted and covered the views of the quality managers of all the ISO 9000 certified Egyptian construction contracting companies with regard to the reasons for implementing ISO 9000 standards, problems encountered during implementation and the benefits realized by their companies as a result of implementing the ISO 9000 standards. All these reasons, problems and benefits of implementing ISO 9000 standards were further discussed, analysed and compared with other research work conducted in other international and regional countries. These results represent a consensus view of the Egyptian construction contracting companies. The similarities and differences that exist between Egypt and other international and regional countries with respect to the reasons for implementation, implementation problems and benefits of implementing ISO 9000 standards have been identified and discussed. This will help in providing a clear and better understanding about the status of the ISO 9000 standards in the Egyptian construction industry and create more awareness among these companies with regard to the ISO 9000 standards, which will impact positively on the growth and development of these companies and ultimately on the Egyptian construction industry.