Construction quality in China during transition: A review of literature and empirical examination

Proper management processes were often regarded as the most important factors affecting construction quality, while the availability of capital, plant, and labour were taken for granted and the demands of property users were always ignored. The phenomenon that the construction quality of projects undertaken by State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) was better than that of non-SOEs revealed that in developing countries such as China during transition, the availability of resources could be very important to construction quality. By utilizing regression models to evaluate 550 robust province level data from 1993 to 2001, this paper will offer an insight into the hard factors affecting construction quality. It is found that higher power of machinery per labourer, the use of more plants or machinery per m2 of floor space, properties with larger unit areas, the growth of GDP, the higher labour productivity tender to be associated with higher quality.