Strategies to Reduce Residential Defects at Post-Handover: Root Cause Analysis and Mitigation Measures

Abstract

This paper examines handover process leading to major defects post-handover in construction industry, focusing on residential buildings. Construction inspections happen during the project's construction phase. This places restrictions on what a building inspector may see, and as a result, there is frequently a disconnect between the perceived quality of construction and flaws that later affect the tenants. The study's primary goals are to identify significant faults found after project handover and pinpoint the root causes of those defects. Finally, a few preventative methods are noted. A document examination and a review of the literature were carried out. A pilot survey including site surveys and interviews was undertaken in addition to some semi- structured, case-specific interviews. It is found from the study that missing items and tasks, faulty installations and fittings and poor finishing are most occurring defects at post-handover in residential buildings. The major contributing factors to these identified most occurring defects are poor activity planning by workers, communication gap, poor technical testing and commissioning and poor tracking of changes. The strategies identified for the analyzed major factors are planning of activity orders in advance, involvement of operation and user representatives early in the project, frequent progress meetings, stricter self-inspection regimes and multiple random inspections by contractors, client’s frequent visits on sites. It is expected that by the better understanding of post-handover defect types, cause and strategies of minimizing defect in building construction project would be beneficial for the upcoming construction projects.