Challenges Facing Building Construction

It is now well-established that the industry faced enormous challenges. To overcome these challenges and hence improve efficiency and productivity requires a deeper understanding of the challenges. In this chapter, the main challenges related to construction material and equipment, manpower, and management will be examined. The consequences of these challenges which often lead to cost overruns and delays will be discussed. The aim of this chapter is to provide a deeper understanding of these challenges so as to inform the choice of the decision support systems to be used in the subsequent chapters. The construction industry has a long-standing history of being inefficient. While progress has been made in developed countries, a lot still needs to be done in the developing world to improve efficiency in the delivery of projects. This chapter examines three key objectives: the challenges that the construction industry faces in developing countries, the implications of these challenges with respect to cost overruns and delays, and the relationship between challenges and implications as a foundation for decision-making problems.