Achieving quality and productivity in the house building sector

Reports on the results of a research study which sought to investigate the impact of quality management systems (QMS) based on BS5750 on construction productivity of UK building contractors specializing in the housing sector. The main variables of the study (quality and productivity) have been operationalized as follows: quality, the companies were classified as having a formal quality system if they were registered to BS5750; productivity of a construction project was defined and measured in terms of the utilization of resources used by the contractors in every project. Owing to the heterogeneity of construction output in general, it was necessary to use the monetary value of resources in an effort to standardize output and apply a certain measure of harmony to it; such that useful comparison may be made. Data were drawn from priced bills of quantities and the productivity of QMS and non‐QMS contractors was modelled through utilization of the theory of isoquants. Results pointed towards the acceptance of the hypothesis that there is a relationship between the implementation of QMS and productivity on site.