Impact Of Poor Construction Material Management On Building Construction Project Cost And Time In Jimma Town

Abstract

Proper construction material management is important to deliver a construction project pre-estimated project cost and time. However, construction material management is a major problem in the Ethiopian construction industry that has important implications for the efficiency of the industry due to the lack of effective management. This contributes to several negative consequences such as high project costs and delays in the progress of work at hand. Likewise, the building construction project in Jimma town reflects various problems ranging from delays in project completion time and cost overrun. Therefore, this research aimed to assess the impact of poor construction material management on building construction project cost and time in Jimma town The population for this research was all ongoing building construction project sites in Jimma town and purposive sampling techniques were used. To achieve these research objectives questionnaire survey and interviews were used to collect relevant data from contractors, consultants and client representatives on-site. A total of 45 valid questionnaire survey was returned 31(83.78%) from contractors, 9(81.82%) from consultants and 5(62.50%) from clients. So that, based on the respondent's agreement the relative importance index (RII) value and percentage were used to rank and explain their agreement by using Microsoft excel. Finally, the findings from the study identified that report the problems of construction material on site(40%) and following up the prices in the market & recording the variation of prices (40%) are construction material management techniques not performed usually and recording by using informal forms on site and contractors are faced high challenges to implementing construction material management techniques in building construction projects due to fluctuation in the price of construction materials (RII 0.83), material demand fluctuation (RII 0.80), material monopoly by supply (RII 0.74), overall suspensions that can incidentally due to peace of a country or town (RII 0.72) and lack of a systematic method to record and control materials during the construction phase with the manual method being preferred in projects (RII 0.71). Also, construction material management has a high impact on building construction project cost due to materials price fluctuation(RII 0.80), delay in progress payment by owner(RII 0.78), design changes (RII 0.76), improper storing methods (RII 0.72), inadequate qualified & experienced staff (RII 0.71), Shortage of materials in the market (RII 0.71), an improper study on material availability study and its source (RII 0.71), excessive paperwork (RII 0.70), lack of communication between main office & site office(RII 0.70) and misuse of the specification (RII 0.70). Correspondingly, construction material management has a high impact on building project time due to design changes (RII 0.76), materials price fluctuation (RII 0.75), availability of specified construction materials in the market (RII 0.73), improper study on material availability study and its source (RII 0.70) and Changes of materials specification during construction (RII 0.70). On the other hand, most building construction projects exceeded up to 11% - 20% of total project cost and time due to poor Construction material management.