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INTRODUCTION

Abdul Rahman et al. (2006) stated that

construction sector contribute a great

percentage to the economy in the growing

countries, which includes Malaysia

Recently, the construction industry in most

countries is associated with poor quality (Tam

and Tong, 1996). The lack of skilled labour in

this industry and poor management resulted

in poor workmanship in construction projects.

Besides that, potential clients today are well

informed of information from the construction

industry, thus becoming increasingly

demanding in terms of quality towards their

potential purchases as these clients want to

get what they paid for in the first place. To

survive in the construction industry, the

industry players must deliver good quality

work which is worth the value of money of the

client by constantly improving and upgrading

themselves (Kam and Tang, 1997).

Hence, it is necessary to identify the source of

the problems and then find out the alternative

to solve it. By identifying the significant factors

that cause poor workmanship, it provided

more information about low quality of

building on construction projects to the

contractors. Therefore, the objectives of this

research are to identify the significant factors

that cause poor workmanship and to explore

the understanding of Quality Assessment

System in Construction (QLASSIC) as tool in

monitoring the quality of building in

construction project.

QUALITY ASSESMENT SYSTEMS IN

CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

Ho (1999) defined building evaluation as the

systematic assessment of building

performance relative to defined objectives

and requirements. An effective quality

assessment system should be able to detect

and measure all types of defects and capture

all aspects of construction quality that affect

the performance of buildings. Such

measurements without proper and accurate

tests and detection methods, defects cannot

be detected. (Low, 2001)

Many countries had introduced quality

assurance assessments to ensure the quality

of building products and ultimately, the

construction industry (Kam & Abdul Hamid,

2012). The Construction Industry

Development Board (CIDB) of Singapore had

taken several initiatives in promoting quality

building products in the past two decades.

CIDB of Singapore first introduced

Construction Quality Assessment System

(CONQUAS) in 1989 for public building and

Building Quality Assessment Service (BQAS) in

1991 for private sectors. In 1993, CIDB of

Singapore introduced Civil engineering

Construction Quality Assessment System (CE

CONQUAS) based on CONQUAS to measure

the quality of contractors and benchmarking

the value of quality into a more standard form

for better reference and understanding.

Besides that, due to the constant discovery of

poor building construction in Hong Kong, the

Hong Kong Housing Authority (HKHA) had

adopted Performance Assessment Scoring

System (PASS) in 1990 based on Singapores

CONQUAS of 1989. Maintenance Assessment

Scoring System (MASS) was also developed to

evaluate and maintain the quality of buildings.

MALAYSIAN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY AND

SYSTEM ADOPTED

In Malaysia, construction industry can be

known as major productive sector since the

construction started in the early 1990s with

the development of mammoth projects (Abdul

Razak et al., 2010). It serves to get the

development and others while being a major

donor on the whole of economic

development. Thence, the Construction

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Industry Development Board of Malaysia

(CIDB) is established in July 1994 which

delegated with the duty of managing the

necessitate and requirements of the

construction industry, planning the direction

of the building industry, addressing the

pertinent topics and troubles faced by the

construction industry, and also making

recommendations on the formulation of

policies for the building industry. (Kam &

Abdul Hamid, 2012)CIDB of Malaysia also had

adopted Singapores CONQUAS and created

their own quality assessment system known

as Quality Assessment System in Construction

(QLASSIC) to set benchmarks for the qualityperformance of contractors in construction

works. In 2001, Quality Assessment System in

Construction (QLASSIC) was introduced by

CIDB of Malaysia. QLASSIC is used to measure

the workmanship quality of a completed

building project. There are three main

components: structural, architectural and

external works will be measured according to

QLASSIC assessment (CIS 7, 2006). The results

from the QLASSIC score can be an indicator to

a building quality as the QLASSIC assessment

is directly used to measure the workmanship

quality of completed projects (Chan, 2009).

FACTORS CONTRIBUTE TO POOR

WORKMANSHIP IN CONSTRUCTION

According to Abdul Rahman et al. (1996), the

workmanship has been classified as one of the

mainly common non-conformance of theconstruction site. Throughout literatures,

eight variables that interrelated to the drives

of poor quality in construction projects had

been ground out. The Variables are:

1.

Poor project management

2. Complicated role of subcontractor

3. Lack experience and competency of

labours

4.

Language barrier to communicationand lack of communication

5. Unsuitable construction equipments

6. Poor weather condition

7. Limited time

8. Limited cost