The Effect of Faulty Design on Construction Defects in Public Housing Products

Abstract

A construction is defective when there is failure or shortcoming in the function, performance, statutory or user requirements of the structure, fabric, services, or other facilities. An increase in the construction defects can also be attributed to faulty designs. Many problems arise where design is satisfactory in principle but has a low probability of achievement in practice. This research sets out to investigate and to analyze the impacting factors in design, which affect construction defects and their overall relative importance based on the procurement of public housing. It has shown that aspects in faulty design causing the construction defects can be ordered according to frequency of occurrence within each group of defects, namely: structural defects, roof works defects, walls and finishes defects, floor and finishes defects, openings works defects, and sanitary-electrical defects. According to the different views of defects given by groups of respondent, faulty design in housing products are not merely associated with physical evidences found on site. In term of application during design process, there are many other aspects impacting the results. Some errors and active failures done by the designers as individual or as a team, direct influence of workplace, and organizational factors, are believed to have contributions over the faulty designs that lead to construction defects.