Exploring factors influencing service quality of construction management consultant in Indonesian building construction project from owners' point of view

Abstract

Construction management (CM) consultant has an important role in construction project. It involves in many activities during the construction processes such as designing, tendering, consulting and managing the construction. Based on that sequence, it can be seen that CM consultant’s role starts from the beginning of the construction. Despite its important role, the service quality of CM consultant in Indonesia can still be improved. In addition, previous studies show lack of research in exploring service quality in context of CM consultant in construction projects. Therefore, the objectives of this research are to evaluate the importance level of CM consultant’s service quality items; to analyze factors of CM consultant’s service quality; and to describe the importance of CM consultant’s service quality based on owners’ perception in Indonesian building construction projects. This research is classified as quantitative and qualitative research approach. The quantitative research approach aims to evaluate the importance level of service quality items and explore factors that influence CM consultant’s service quality. The qualitative research approach aims to explain the importance of each service quality item based on owner’s perception. The survey questionnaire and interview techniques were used to gather data from project owners. There were 71 respondents who participated in this research. The collected data was analyzed by conducting relative importance index and factor analysis. The result shows the importance level of each CM consultant’s service quality item. Based on the relative importance index, the most important item is “The CM consultant is able to anticipate the problem before it happens in the project”. The next most important item is “The CM consultant does a job according to the SOP that has already been agreed”. In addition, the results show 10 factors influencing consultant’s service quality in Indonesian building construction projects. The examples of factors are “Understanding & providing individualized attention for the owner”; “Service oriented characteristic of the staff”; “Awareness of the project’s status and information”; etc. The findings can help CM consultant understand the service quality factors that should be provided.