Waste in the Indonesian Construction Projects

Abstract

Waste can significantly affect the business performance and productivity of contracting organisations. This paper aims to investigate the incidence of waste within contractors companies in Indonesia, focusing on non-residential building and infrastructure projects. Based on respondents’ perceptions, data was collected through questionnaires and followed up by personal interviews. Paired-samples t-test was performed to group the importance of waste variables and waste causes variables. The findings suggest that six factors were found to be the key variables of waste including repair on finishing works, waiting for materials, delays to schedule, slow tradesmen, waste of raw materials on-site and lack of supervision. Whereas design changes, slowness in making decisions, lack of trades’ skill, inappropriate construction methods, poor coordination among project participants, delay of material delivery to site and poor planning and scheduling were identified as the key variables causing waste. This paper recommends a simple method of waste identification to assist construction managers to detect any waste that may occur during the construction process. To provide the best outcome of contractors’ performance, several alternative solutions were suggested to be applied on-site.