Abstract:
In comparison to business-as-usual situations, construction services in a post-disaster rebuild environment are procured and managed in an ad hoc way. The increasing rate of natural disasters in recent years has highlighted the need to seek ways to improve the state of construction practices in the post-disaster rebuild environment. This is significant due to the poor performance of contractors in post-disaster reconstruction projects. There is a common belief that continuous improvement in delivery of contractor services can be achieved through analysing client values and satisfaction. Client satisfaction can be regarded as a major determinant of a service provider’s ability to meet client values. This research, adopting a mixed methodological (quantitative and qualitative) approach, was undertaken to identify client values in post-disaster reconstruction projects and to understand how service providers comply with those values to satisfy their clients. Client values were identified through a comprehensive literature review which was complemented by expert interviews and analysis of documents obtained from archives of client construction organisations participating in this research. This resulted in a long list of values being identified and categorised into two groups, terminal and instrumental. Terminal values are the clients’ final goals, or they are in relation to a final goal, while instrumental values are the requirements needed to help achieve terminal values. Next, a comparative study, using interviews and a questionnaire survey, was conducted to examine how the importance of the identified values differs between business-as-usual and post-disaster reconstruction. The findings indicate that clients in disaster reconstruction have less concern regarding cost and more concern about time, compared to business-as-usual, while they have similar views regarding quality for both situations. Also, the significance of instrumental values such as integration, procurement and communication for reconstruction projects is highlighted. Due to the differences that exist for prioritisation of client values between the two situations, the study moved towards enhancing the understanding of client values within reconstruction services in a post-disaster situation. Using interviews, 39 values (extracted from the long list of values) were identified as client values within contractor services in a post-disaster situation. In addition, using a questionnaire survey with public and private clients, the research determined the levels of importance and performance of the 39 client values. Satisfaction analysis, priority ranking, and importance-performance analysis are applied to identify and prioritise the critical client values which require improvement. In terms of importance, an analysis of the survey results revealed the nine most significant values under the nine Project Management Institute knowledge-management areas. Eight of these values are the same from both a public and private clients’ perspective, such as timeliness, to-budget delivery, higher standard of quality, availability of resources, competency, building a trust-based relationship, financial strength and stability, communication technique and documentation, and productivity. The ninth values for public and private clients are risk management skills & techniques, and financial strength and stability, respectively. In addition, based on these values, a conceptual client value index was proposed. In terms of satisfaction, the findings explored and prioritised the reconstruction contracting-service areas requiring improvement from the perspectives of public and private clients. In terms of terminal values, timeliness makes the largest contribution to client dissatisfaction, from both the public and private client perspective. In terms of instrumental values, competency and productivity make the largest contribution to private and public client dissatisfaction, respectively. The study provides improved awareness as to how contractor services are valued, from the client perspective, particularly in post-disaster situations. The research ensures greater emphasis can be placed on values are a better predictor for successful delivery of constructing services in post-disaster situations. Accordingly, based on those values, the research designed a satisfaction assessment instrument which can be used to assess client satisfaction and contactor performance in post-disaster reconstruction projects. In addition, the study identified the values as area of concern for improvement. It is recommended that service providers devote more effort to improve their performance on the values identified as having significant association with client satisfaction.