Singapore announced its Construction 21 Blueprint in 1999, which included quality improvement as one of the many initiatives aimed at making the construction industry more competitive and efficient. This has culminated in the development of the National Productivity and Quality Specification (NPQS), which was meant to provide a benchmark of desirable quality standards for construction works in Singapore. A survey was carried out in late 2002 before the launch of the NPQS to investigate the use of specifications in the then Singapore construction industry. A representative cross section of samples was taken to include clients, consultants and contractors in both the public and private sectors. Whilst interestingly different perceptions of the respondents were captured, the survey results show that there is indeed scope for improvement from both the drafting and usage viewpoints. On the drafting side, lack of co-ordination, ambiguities, irrelevant clauses and inappropriate standards were the frequently cited problems. On the usage side, specifications were not used as rigorous as they should be for controlling quality of works on site. Clients, in particular, were concerned with the late approvals of alternative material proposals. These findings point to the need for extra care and attention on the preparation and use of specifications as important project control documents, which always form part of the contracts executed in Singapore.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Volume (Year): 22 (2004) Issue (Month): 10 (December) Pages: 1067-1079 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF