Framework of measurement engineer workload at Public Work Department district of Malaysia

Abstract

Public Works Department (PWD) serves as a technical agency to the government of Malaysia under Ministry of Works. In carrying out the responsibility in managing the development of Malaysia's infrastructures and public facilities, PWD must effectively and efficiently manages all its resources such as time, cost, manpower and quality of work. In particular, many efforts were undertaken by PWD to improve the quality of project management in the PWD, however there are still some problems in delivering projects on time to clients. One of the main problems is inadequacy of staff, especially engineers to supervise projects and maintenance of government's assets. Therefore, this study aims at identifying the variables influencing engineers' workload at PWD District offices within Peninsular Malaysia. To investigate engineers' workload, a survey is conducted to collect relevant data from engineers working at PWD District offices within Peninsular Malaysia. One of survey findings indicates the most influencing variable is the inadequacy of manpower at district offices. Comprehensive analysis is conducted on collected data and the results are used to determine the ideal mean average number of projects for each engineer at PWD District offices. The average number is derived according to a proposed workload computation program and proposed to be used as a standard number of projects per engineer. This study also proposed recommendations for the top management of PWD to fully utilize existing engineer manpower in order to efficiently supervise the projects especially at PWD District offices.