Management and maintenance of the welfare facilities at construction sites in Iraq

Abstract

Employees play an important role in the industrial production of a nation. Construction industry employs a larger number of laborers which reflect ongoing accident, health and welfare issues. The welfare facilities issues are to be considered right from the design stage till the completion and handing over of the project. Management commitment and proper coordination between contractors, clients, and workforce is needed for safe work conditions seem very much lacking in the Iraqi construction sites. Though labor safety laws are available, the numerous problems regarding welfare facilities on the construction sites are still reported. The objectives of the study were to identify the factors that leads to poor site welfare facilities implementation, to assess the current condition of welfare facilities, and to examine the management and maintenance of welfare facilities in the Iraqi construction sites. The study administered (35) set of structured survey questionnaire from random construction sites managed by various contractors in Iraq. The collected data was then analyzed using frequency distribution analysis and Average Index method. The results are categorized according to the level of satisfactory or agreement and presented in the tables and figures for easy interpretation. The findings showed that, the factors that lead to poor welfare facilities were in the category of moderately important according to the analysis of the average index. Furthermore, the most important factors that was noticed were from the aspects of financial, management and practice of rules and regulations on the construction project. Also, the results showed that the management and maintenance were mostly classified as moderately satisfied, which indicate that the role of the top management could use some more improvement and solution especially in term of the implementation of regulations and laws concerning the welfare facilities. Finally, the results also showed that current condition of welfare facilities were classified as moderately satisfied, which indicate a lot more efforts are needed to fulfill the gap between code of practice and current site practices of welfare facilities.