Quality Improvement Practices of Award-Winning Residential Builders and Housing Developers

New home buyers in United States are becoming more discriminating in their home buying decision. They are demanding quality construction at reasonable prices. The current state of construction market also gives construction buyers more ammunition to be more discriminate when they choose to purchase homes. To be competitive and remain in business, housing contractors and developers must meet the growing quality demands of the customers. Thus, the competition to meet the buyers’ quality demand has forced many of them to rethink the ways they build their homes. The improved designs, and construction methods and practices have resulted into award-winning quality-built homes for many of these contractors. This study was conducted to examine the quality improvement characteristics of selected award-winning residential builders and housing developers in selected counties in North Carolina, U.S.A. Through a structured questionnaire, the researchers collected information relative to their common quality characteristics, organizational culture and overall business practices. Data analysis was performed using basic descriptive statistics. The results show that regular inspection of work in progress, feedback from customers, and immediate attention to punch list items, were highly ranked among the quality characteristics evaluated.

Keywords:

Quality improvement , residential construction , TQM , Productivity , Housing Quality