Complex building construction projects: reducing rework through facilitation of craftspeople’s motivation in United Arab Emirates.

Abstract

Most construction projects are dominated by schedule and cost overruns. Rework is a major cause, with craftspeople’s behaviour vital to its occurrence. In response to this issue, this study explores reducing rework through facilitation of craftspeople’s motivation. Notably, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) construction context, quality management (QM) within the contractor’s work domain are hindered by lack of commitment and motivation by top management, which in turn hinders the quality mind-set of craftspeople. Likewise rework reduction models (RRM), which analyse the causes of rework at project level, have not been implemented effectively. Lack of motivation stems from resistance to change, shortage of expertise and lack of standardisation at the construction site. Many motivation theories lack empirical evidence to understand craftspeople’s motivation over the construction lifecycle. For this reason, self-determination theory (SDT) was conceptualised as a human motivation theory that will give insight in this area. Using a qualitative exploratory case study, factors influencing craftspeople’s motivation within the UAE’s local attributes of work environment, culture and management style were explored across three cases. The researcher collected data using semi-structured interviews and documentary sources. Data analysis was done via thematic analysis. Using cross-case synthesis, the researcher identified common themes responsible for craftspeople’s motivation which influences a project’s level of rework. The researcher adopted a systems thinking approach to deal with the dynamic nature of those themes so as to understand the causes and effects of elements interacting with one another within the building construction system. The causal loop diagram (CLD) depicts the craftspeople’s perceptions and experiences of their motivation in relation to the issue of rework. The resulting driving factors of those themes formed from the feedback mechanism were diverse work experience, quality and number of supervision, on-time payment, communication difficulty, on-site training, work acceleration, long working hours, and contracting by worker. Synthesis of theoretical concepts through CLD outcomes facilitated understanding and interpretation of craftspeople’s motivation influencing the project’s level of rework. This was validated using documentary analysis of the relevant project’s information on the cause of rework. The findings revealed the regulation of craftspeople’s motivation, in relation to rework, as identified, introjected or external, according to self-determination theory. Identified regulation promotes autonomous motivation, which facilitates positive outcomes on project performance, whereas introjected and external regulation promotes a controlled motivation which impacts project performance negatively. The study showed that the motivation types were mediated by how well the basic psychological needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness had been satisfied. For this reason, a motivational rework reduction model was developed using the theory (SDT) initially designed by (Deci and Ryan 2000). It is expected that utilisation of this model by practitioners and site managers would reduce the project’s level of rework by facilitating craftspeople’s motivation in building construction projects.