Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx

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Civil Engineering

The Total Quality Management (TQM) journey of Malaysian building

contractors
Idris Othman a,⇑, Siti Norfarahhanim Mohd Ghani a, Shim Woon Choon b
a
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University Technology PETRONAS, 32610 Seri Iskandar, Perak, Malaysia
b
Wawasan Group of Companies, Wisma Wawasan, Jalan PJS8/12, Bandar Sunway, 46150 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Malaysian Government has announced that for construction industry to transform by 2020, quality in
Received 24 July 2019 construction is needed to be improved. Total Quality Management (TQM) could facilitate this
Revised 11 October 2019 motive. Thus, the purpose of this research is to identify, rank and analyze the factors affecting TQM
Accepted 6 November 2019
implementation in a construction company so that industrial practitioners avoid poor quality products.
Available online xxxx
A case study concept was used and a questionnaire survey was collected from 32 respondents. The
reliability test was conducted using Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient. Employee related factor was identified
Keywords:
to be the most crucial factors affecting TQM implementation. Contractor group of respondents showed
Total Quality Management
Construction
excellent level of internal consistency (overall reliability) with the validation value of 0.956 using
Contractor Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient. In conclusion this research able to give a series of recommendation and a
Malaysia clear quality management which can be followed by the industry practitioners to ensure that Total
Quality Management can be implemented.
Ó 2019 Ain Shams University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under
the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction is loosely structured. However, Harrington, Voehl and Wiggin

Construction sector plays a critical part in the economy of
Malaysia seeing its contribution in capital formation, employment
creation and revenue generation which bolster the Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) and the financial advancement of Malaysia [20].
Economic Performance Fourth Quarter 2018, Malaysia’s economy
growth accelerates to 4.7% with construction being sector being
one of the main contributors. Construction is as fourth key contrib-
utors to the economic growth with 2.6% contributions to the GDP
after Services, Manufacturing and Agriculture [30] as shown in
Table 1.
Despite the growth and construction industry contribution to
national GDP, the performance of the projects are not fully satisfied
by many clients [22,22]. Sustainable quality improvement is hardly
achieved because of the construction quality management setting
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: idris_othman@utp.edu.my (I. Othman), siti_17007594@utp.
edu.my (S. Norfarahhanim Mohd Ghani).
Peer review under responsibility of Ain Shams University.
Production and hosting by Elsevier
[12] suggested otherwise. They narrated Teixeira [41] in their stud-
ies that by referring to main guidelines, anybody has a great free-
dom to develop solution for TQM. Therefore, organization should
develop framework with consideration of their managers’ view of
Quality Management (QM). However, many contractors are not
motivated to improve quality in their projects and organization
[23,44]. In order to improve quality issues faced by the contractors,
TQM is suggested to be implemented in construction setting.
In January 1st, 2009, all Grade G7 contractors has been made
compulsory to be certified with the ISO 9000 Quality Management
System by Construction Industrial Development Board (CIDB). Fail-
ure to do so, the companies will be downgraded, which effect their
business activities [6]. In order to overcome problems such as infe-
rior quality of construction materials, building defects, construc-
tion delays, high accident rates and environmental impact issues,
many contractors have started ISO certification [20,25,27]. In the
last four decades, TQM has achieved improvement in term of con-
tinuous improvement in the system of holistic management [10].
TQM has been proved very successful in many industries especially
manufacturing sector [29,31]. Therefore, by integrating TQM into
contractor’s system of management will improve the problems of
quality. Likita et al. [38] found that when TQM is fully imple-
mented, processes in construction sector will be controlled in
much better. In Malaysia’s construction industry context, few

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asej.2019.11.002
2090-4479/Ó 2019 Ain Shams University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Please cite this article as: I. Othman, S. Norfarahhanim Mohd Ghani and S. Woon Choon, The Total Quality Management (TQM) journey of Malaysian build-
ing contractors, Ain Shams Engineering Journal, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asej.2019.11.002
2 I. Othman et al. / Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx
Table 1
Malaysia economic performance fourth quarter 2018 (Adapted from [30]).
Economic Share Growth rate
activity
Services 56.0% 6.9% (Underpinned by Wholesale & retail trade,
information & communication, finance and
insurance).
Manufacturing 22.8% 4.7% (Contributed by Electrical & Electronics,
Petroleum, Chemical, Rubber, Plastics, transport
equipment, other manufacturing and repair
products).
Construction 4.2% 2.6% (Attributed by Civil engineering, Specialized
construction activities and Non-residential
buildings).
Mining & 7.9% 0.5% (Buoyed by the recovery in production of
Quarrying Crude & condensate and Natural gas).
Agriculture 7.9%
0.4% (Reflected by the improvement in Oil Palm
while Rubber and Forestry & logging contracted).
studies have been undertaken related to TQM in term of theories,
techniques, concepts, model, framework, implementation, impact,
efficiency and performance. However, no evidence is found that
there has been statistical research on the actual extent of TQM
practiced by building contractors in Malaysia,
2. Literature review
This section presents TQM overview by explaining its brief his-
tory, definition and principles. Benefits of TQM also will be elabo-
rated to get a feel of what impact it could give to the organizations
that decided to adopt it. Author also presents related work on TQM
in Malaysian construction environment by recording the strengths
and weaknesses of each work and provide the way forward to
expand TQM’s body of knowledge in this sector.
2.1. Total Quality Management (TQM)?
2.1.1. Overview
TQM is the result of evolution in quality. It was started by Wal-
ter Shewhart in early 1920s when product quality control was
applied with statistical theory. After that in the 1940s led by Amer-
icans such as Deming, Juran, Feigenbaum and Crosby, the concept
was further developed in Japan. The focus widened to quality of all
issues within the organization. The four evolutionary phases of
quality are inspection, quality control, quality assurances then
TQM. TQM is a philosophy to meet quality output satisfying the
expectation of customer. Quality level in TQM is determined by
customers [5]. Quality standards inclusive of the Deming Prize
and the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Awards (MBNQA)
ISO 9000 series, specify principles and processes that comprise
TQM [4,5,9]. Fig. 1 sums up eight principles of TQM.
2.1.2. TQM benefits
TQM benefits should be understand in order to appreciate its
importance [12]. For improving competitiveness around the world,
TQM has been utilized as an applied process [16]. TQM could boost
performance in two ways according to Ghobadian and Ghallear
[11]. In short term, TQM via premium pricing could increase prof-
itability. However, TQM could increase market share in the long
term. The financial performance and market share can be increased
by utilizing the strategic pursuit of quality [7]. TQM also could give
positive impact on speed of response, productivity, customer ser-
vices and quality of product. On top of that, Helton [13] described
the impressive financial gains made by most Baldridge Award win-
ners apart from improvement in business performance.
Please cite this article as: I. Othman, S. Norfarahhanim Mohd Ghani and S. Woon Choon, The Total Quality Management (TQM) journey of Malaysian build-
ing contractors, Ain Shams Engineering Journal, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asej.2019.11.002
Fig. 1. TQM principles (Adapted from [45]).
Those firms in construction sector specifically that successfully
implemented TQ can reduced workforce rework, workforce, non-
conformities, improved overall project schedule and increase of
market share [18,26,28,34]. Besides that, TQM in construction
industry also proven that company reputation can be increased,
considerable market share can be won, and customer delight can
be achieved [38]. TQM is a philosophy that delivers long-term ben-
efits. There are many cases showing the successfully implementa-
tion of TQM. However, there are also failure cases. Therefore, TQM
must be implemented completely [3,14,16].
2.2. TQM journey of Malaysia construction industry
Highly interested in Quality Management (QM) activities can be
seen since 1990s in Malaysia [42]. Lasserre and Probert [23],
recorded that Malaysia has a better quality sophistication and
expectations than other growing countries in Asia. Malaysia also
embarked by 2020 to attain the status of industrialized nation.
Therefore, Malaysia becoming a practical area for the studies of
THQM in a developing economy arena. Since then, research on
TQM in manufacturing industry also been conducted on in Malay-
sia [1,18,33,39,40] service industries [32] and a few other sectors.
However, research in construction industry is still very limited.
While abundant of TQM research was found in other countries’
construction industry, author had found only five previous studies
directly related to Malaysian construction industry from database;
which reviewed in the following Table 2.
From Table 2, the strengths and weaknesses of the related
works are identified. Thiagaran, Zairi and Dale [42] work has
strength in premiering guidelines to implement TQM in Malaysian
construction industry but lacks in assessment of TQM implementa-
tion. It is understandable since there were limited studies of TQM
implementation in construction industry during the time that
assessment of TQM implementation is yet to be done. Janipha
and Ismail [2] proposed work has strength in identifying issues
of quality in construction. They were right when they reported that
the initial steps in implementing successful quality in construction
environment are to recognize issues in the construction environ-
ment itself and the issues in construction quality. However, they
were not able to support their hypothesis on the companies which
implement quality practice will have direct, positive impact to
their business. There was also no TQM assessment practice done
in the study (see Table 3).
 I. Othman et al. / Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx 3

Table 2
Table of comparison.

Work TQM scope Strength Weaknesses

Thiagaragan, Zairi & Dale
[42]
Janipha & Ismail [2]
Seng & Loon [28]
Likita et al. [38]
Jong, Sim & Lew [18]
Proposed Model The guidelines of effective TQM implementation No assessment on TQM practice by construction industry
were presented from a senior management players.
perspective.
Exploring Issues The study found that quality implementation is Stated a hypothesis that ‘‘considering and implementing
required to promote the image of corporate quality in their organization and throughout construction
instead of as a culture in every organization’s process contribute direct benefits to the companies”, but
area. there was no proven studies mentioned, and no actual
assessment conducted to validate the hypothesis.
Exploring Issues & The identified barriers in this study can be a guide Data collected was from 138 engineers which might not
their Relations to to implement TQM in the organization. represent the whole Malaysian construction industry
Level of suggestion.
Implementation They just find relationship between barriers and level of
implementation, not assessment on the actual TQM
implementation.
Overview in Able to list down and review a few TQM related But the sample might not be enough to represent TQM in
Construction Sector studies in construction industries worldwide. construction industry as whole; only 5 articles reviewed
when in fact there is more available TQM studies in
construction industry.
None of the studies reviewed showed an assessment aspect
of TQM.
Relationship with This study can guide the practitioners to know The results were purely based on questionnaire collected;
Project Performance about TQM roles in enhancing the performance. there was no interview or case study to validate the
findings.
No assessment on TQM practice in Malaysian construction
industry.

data analysis and discussion were only based on questionnaire

Table 3
Factors affecting TQM implementation under study.
No. Factors of TQM implementation
1 Management commitment
2 Employee related
3 Customer related
4 Organizational culture
5 Communicational related
6 Strategic planning
7 Teamwork
8 Continuous improvement
The strength of Seng and Loon [28] work lies in issues and bar-
riers exploration, which can help those construction companies
that intended to implement TQM be aware of the barriers and
overcome them first before implementing. However, their target
sample was from engineers which cannot represent the whole sug-
gestion of TQM implementation, resulting less reliability of the
results. Further studies can be done by distributing the survey to
all level of organizations from top to bottom and focused on the
companies that adopted ISO series in their organizations only since
this ensure that the companies applied TQM in their operations
and managements. There was also no TQM practice assessment
conducted in the study. Likita et al. [38] are researchers from
Malaysian local universities with the article title of ‘‘An Overview
of TQM in Construction”, however none of the selected studies to
be reviewed were on TQM in Malaysian construction industry,
which clearly there were available studies on that since 2000 by
Thiagaran, Zairi and Dale [42]. Furthermore, the number of
selected studies reviewed were only five, which cannot be consid-
ered as overview of TQM implementation in construction because
there are a lot of studies about TQM in construction sector world-
wide. There was also no assessment of TQM practice study
reviewed or mentioned in work [38].
Finally, Jong, Sim and Liew [18] work has strength in providing
further insights of TQM roles for improvement the performance of
the project. However, several weaknesses are identified such as the
response and literature review. They did not conduct interview
on experts to further find the how and why of each outcome of
their study which could give better knowledge of the relationship
between performance of project and the TQM. Besides, the ques-
tionnaire distributed were designed to find relationship between
the performance of project and TQM.
From the comparisons, it can be summarized that there is gap in
current TQM studies of Malaysian construction industry which is
no assessment conducted. An assessment to explore the extent of
actual TQM practice in current Malaysian construction environ-
ment. The significance of having this assessment is that it could
give a picture and definition of actual TQM practice in Malaysian
construction sector. TQM has been widely accepted and discussed
since the last four decades, but where is Malaysia in the TQM jour-
ney? How far has our construction industry come? Available stud-
ies on other sectors other than construction in Malaysia is a lot
especially in manufacturing, service, food processing, automotive
and SMEs, but there are still very limited studies in construction
sector. More research significance or contributions are further
described in section 5 of this paper. But, the way forward in TQM
study of Malaysian construction industry is to assess the extent
of the TQM practiced by the Malaysia’s large-sized (G7) contractors
with ISO 9001:2008 certification by self-assessment questionnaire
survey. Based on the findings, research objectives are formulated in
subsequent section.
3. Research objective
The study objectives are:
(a) To identify and rank the quality management factors affect-
ing successful completion and sustainable construction of projects
based on the Relative Importance Index (RII) and correlations
between clients, consultants and contractors..
(b) To validate the quality management factors using case stud-
ies project utilizing information at pre construction and construc-
tion stages for TQM implementation of TQM in the construction
company.
The scope are:

Please cite this article as: I. Othman, S. Norfarahhanim Mohd Ghani and S. Woon Choon, The Total Quality Management (TQM) journey of Malaysian build-
ing contractors, Ain Shams Engineering Journal, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asej.2019.11.002
4 I. Othman et al. / Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx
i. Malaysian construction industry.
ii. CIDB registered building contractor which adopted ISO 9001.
4. Research methodology
A descriptive survey was utilized in this study. Saunders et al.
[37] found this type of research seeks to determine the answers
to who, what, where and how. It was designed to explain about
the population’s characteristics. Since this study is to identify fac-
tors affecting TQM implementation and rank them; descriptive
survey could help the researcher to understand better on the con-
struction industry and providing corrective measure or remedial
system from low quality products.
A questionnaire was then created to evaluate the factors affect-
ing TQM implementation. This questionnaire was designed in 3
major parts which are the demographic profile of the respondents,
factors affecting TQM implementation and open ended questions
to add any factors that the respondents think are important to be
listed. The respondent’s selection is very important. The outcome
of research may be invalid if if the wrong persons are chosen
[15]. Thus, the survey’s heterogeneity is maintained by selecting
3 group of respondents which are client, consultants and
contractors.
4.1. Pilot survey
To improve the validation of the survey, a pilot survey was con-
ducted. The questionnaires for the pilot survey were distributed to
the five respondents which are from client, consultant, and con-
tractor firm evaluate the suitability of the questionnaire. Based
on their opinion, slight modification was made in the
questionnaire.
4.2. Preparation and distribution of questionnaire
40 sets of questionnaire were distributed to 3 groups of respon-
dents which are contractors, client and consultants. This question-
naire was prepared by integrating factors affecting TQM
implementation as reported in the literature. The questionnaire
was answered by 32 construction professionals such as managing
directors, project manager, project engineer, design engineer, qual-
ity manager, site manager, supervisor and engineer. The 8 factors
affecting TQM implementation were identified based on the most
occurrences attributes from literature review and were used to for-
mulate the questionnaire are as follow:
The respondents were asked to choose one degree of each factor
which is on the likert scale of 1 (strongly agree) to 4 (disagree).
4.3. Test for reliability and validity of the questionnaire
The Cronbach’s Coefficient Alpha is used to determine the reli-
ability (the consistency of internal). The range of Cronbach’s alpha
is between 0 to +1. Where the higher the value shows the higher
reliability. According to Toke et al. [43], the coefficient value above
0.6 indicates that the measurement procedure is reliable. This
Cronbach’s Coefficient Alpha is computed by using SPSS software
program (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software pro-
gram). Validity test too was conducted to validate the question-
naire prepared. The upper bound of correlation with other
measure can be determined by the square root of the reliability
[24].
4.4. Data analysis
The data from respondent is entered into SPSS program and
analyzed by the RII Relative Important Index (RII) method.
Please cite this article as: I. Othman, S. Norfarahhanim Mohd Ghani and S. Woon Choon, The Total Quality Management (TQM) journey of Malaysian build-
ing contractors, Ain Shams Engineering Journal, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asej.2019.11.002
Sambasivan & Soon [36] and Shah and Dixit [29] used RII to ana-
lyze the relative importance of delay factors in their studies. RII
also used by [35] to analyze the relative important factors affecting
productivity. The RII method as shown in Eq. (1) below was used to
analyze the relative importance of factors affecting TQM imple-
mentation in this study.
X
RII ¼ W=AxN ð1Þ
W is weighting of factor given by the respondents, A is highest
weight (i.e. 4 in this case) and N is the total respondents. The RII
value has a range from 0 to 1 (0 not inclusive). The higher the value
of RII, the more important was the factors affecting TQM imple-
mentation. Subsequently, the ranking from this calculation is used
to cross-compare the relative importance of the factors as given by
the 3 selected group of respondent. From this ranking, we will be
able to identify the most important factors which contribute to
the successful of TQM implementation in the company system.
To further validate the RII rank, Average Index (AI) was used,
the average index as shown in Eq. (2) below could reflect respon-
dents rating.
X
AI ¼ bxn=N ð2Þ
ß is weighing given to each risk factor by respondents, n is the
frequency of the respondents and N, is the total number of respon-
dents. The ratings can be split into discrete categories as follows:
 1 = Strongly disagree (1.00 < AI < 1.5)
 2 = Disagree (1.5 < AI < 2.5)
 3 = Agree (2.5 < AI < 3.5)
 4 = Strongly agree (3.5 < AI < 4.0)
Spearman’s correlation is a method to measure how closely the
number/possibilities related. In a simple meaning, it is a nonpara-
metric measurement between 2 variables [8]. It is computed using
SPSS program. The interpretations of the correlation are as follows:
 Negative correlation – close to
1
 No linear correlation – close to 0
 Positive correlation – close to +1
5. Research contribution
The contributions of this study are:
i. Construction organizations would be interested to assess
their quality management practice and to identify
which areas to enhance so that they can improve the
productivity, teamwork, efficiency, communication and cus-
tomer satisfaction.
ii. There will be a benchmark of quality practice by Public
Listed Companies (PLC) and Non-Listed Companies (NLC),
which each of the group can learn from one another in term
of strategic planning, human resource management and
efficiency.
iii. The study findings also beneficial to engineers, managers,
researchers and top management as it will provide areas
which need additional focus to ensure that TQM implemen-
tation can be done effectively.
6. Result and discussion
6.1. The reliability of the questionnaire
The result of the reliability test by Cronbach’s Coefficient Alpha
is shown in the Table 4 below.
 I. Othman et al. / Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx 5

Cronbach’s alpha of more than 0.60 is considered acceptable, 6.2.1. The demographic characteristics of respondent
more than 0.70 is good and more than 0.90 is excellent. Hence, Table 5 below shows the demographic characteristics of the 32
as shown on the Table 4 above; consultant, all group of respon- respondent who participated in this survey.
dents and client showed a good level of internal consistency of
the formulated questionnaire with the coefficient of 0.769, 0.838
6.2.2. The RII of factors affecting TQM implementation
and 0.914 respectively with validity test value of 0.877, 0.915
8 factors were taken from the literature review and subjected to
and 0.920 respectively. Contractor group of respondents showed
the understanding, knowledge and experience of respondents.
excellent level of internal consistency (overall reliability) for the
They were required to rate their feedbacks to 16 questions on
set of formulated questions in factors affecting TQM implementa-
the factors using a 4-point Likert scale: 1 = Strongly Disagree,
tion with the validation value of 0.956. The results showed indi-
2 = Disagree, 3 = Agree and 4 = Strongly Agree. The result of the Rel-
cated that the questionnaires prepared were reliable and valid on
ative Importance Index (RII) analysis of the factors is shown in
the subject studies in this research.
Table 6.
Based on the ranking in Table 6 the most critical factor affecting
TQM implementation based on all group of respondents (client,
6.2. The analysis of data consultant and contractor) is Employee Related (RII = 0.8984),
ranked as 1 followed by Strategic Planning (RII = 0.8789), Team-
The analysis of data is divided into 4 parts which are the demo- work (RII = 0.8750), Communication Related (RII = 0.8711), Organi-
graphic characteristics of respondent, the RII of factors affecting zational Culture (0.8516), Top Management Commitment (0.8203),
TQM implementation, the average index of the TQM implementa- Continuous Improvement (RII = 0.8008) and Customer Related
tion factors and the Spearman’s correlation of client, consultant (RII = 0.7969). The five most important factors affecting TQM
and contractor group. implementation were identified as (i) Employee Related, (ii) Strate-
gic Planning, (iii) Teamwork, (iv) Communication Related and (v)
Organizational Culture.
Based on the ranking shown above, the discussion of the factors
Table 4 rank based on all groups of respondent’s point of view are:
The reliability and validity statistics.
a) Employee Related (RII = 0.8984)
Group of respondent Cronbach’s Alpha No of items Validity test Based on this study, Employee Related factor was identified to
Client 0.846 16 0.920 be the most crucial factors affecting TQM implementation in
Contractor 0.914 16 0.956 Malaysia’s construction company. It could be divided into three
Consultant 0.769 16 0.877 aspects which are training, self-awareness and personal attitude.
All group of respondent 0.838 16 0.915
Quality can be improved when the employees were provided with
necessary skills and techniques through training. Quality can be

Table 5
Descriptive statistics of research population.

No. Variables Category Frequencies Percentage (%)

1 Gender Male 25 78.1
Female 7 21.9
Total 32 100.0
2 Age 20–29 y/o 14 43.8
30–39 y/o 15 46.9
40–49 y/o 3 9.4
Total 32 100.0
3 Academic qualifications Master 5 15.6
Degree 23 71.9
Diploma 4 12.5
Total 32 100.0
4 Position in the company Managing Director 2 6.3
Project Manager 1 3.1
Design Engineer 6 18.8
Project Engineer 10 31.3
Quality Manager 4 12.5
Contract Manager 1 3.1
M&E Coordinator 1 3.1
M&E Engineer 1 3.1
Senior Executive 1 3.1
Site Coordinator 1 3.1
Site Engineer 2 6.3
Site Manager 1 3.1
Site Supervisor 1 3.1
Total 32 100.0
5 Years of experience <5 years 22 68.8
5–10 years 7 21.9
11–15 years 1 3.1
>16 years 2 6.3
Total 32 100.0
6 Type of company Client 7 21.9
Consultant 7 21.9
Contractor 18 56.3
Total 32 100.0

Please cite this article as: I. Othman, S. Norfarahhanim Mohd Ghani and S. Woon Choon, The Total Quality Management (TQM) journey of Malaysian build-
ing contractors, Ain Shams Engineering Journal, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asej.2019.11.002
6 I. Othman et al. / Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx

Table 6
Descriptive statistics of research population.

FACTORS 1: Strongly disagree 2: Disagree 3: Agree 4: Strongly agree RII AVERAGE RANK
Q4 employee related 0 1 7 24 0.9297 0.8984 1
Q8 employee related 0 1 15 16 0.8672
Q3 strategic planning 0 1 17 14 0.8516 0.8789 2
Q7 strategic planning 0 0 12 20 0.9063
Q14 teamwork 0 0 10 22 0.9219 0.8750 3
Q15 teamwork 0 4 14 14 0.8281
Q13 communication related 0 2 14 16 0.8594 0.8711 4
Q16 communication related 0 1 13 18 0.8828
Q1 organizational culture 0 2 16 14 0.8438 0.8516 5
Q6 organizational culture 0 1 16 15 0.8594
Q2 top management commitment 0 2 18 12 0.8281 0.8203 6
Q9 top management commitment 0 5 14 13 0.8125
Q11 continuous improvement 1 1 16 14 0.8359 0.8008 7
Q12 continuous improvement 0 1 16 12 0.7656
Q5 customer related 0 2 13 17 0.8672 0.7969 8
Q10 customer related 1 7 18 6 0.7266

controlled when all employees are aware with their respective role
in providing quality services and products. Quality too can be
improved when the employees are ‘‘proactive” instead of ‘‘reac-
tive”, which means that they should work on processes before
problems occur rather than when problems occur.
b) Strategic Planning (RII = 0.8789)
Strategic quality planning means formulation of clear vision and
mission statements, quality control usage, quality policy and other
management tools. An appropriate system of quality planning
could improve product quality. Strategic planning too could be
improved or implemented by the companies through preparing
clear guidelines, manual and Standard Operation Procedure (SOP)
before TQM execution. This could help in increasing employees’
awareness on company’s goals and aspiration. By having a clear,
concise and properly documented, the quality system could be
conducted effectively, efficiently and consistently. It could also
facilitate in the monitoring process of the system.
c) Teamwork (RII = 0.8750)
If there is a strategic planning on particular project, or a prop-
erly documented guidelines, SOP and manual; without teamwork
of the workforce (employers and employees) the TQM cannot be
fully implemented. Teamwork can unite the entire staff of the
organization in the success of quality improvement. This could
be done through cooperation, commitment and participation of
staff in the overall quality improvement program initiated by the
organization. One of the respondents also recommended that
cooperation and great coordination between top management
and staffs could ensure that TQM can be implemented.
d) Communication Related (RII = 0.8711)
Communication is important among all members of the organi-
zation or the stakeholders of a particular project. Communication
is inevitably linked to the quality process. Top management vision
of quality needed to be delivered to the employees. The plan or
vision might lose its clarity and momentum if it was not delivered
properly. Therefore communication is important in TQM imple-
mentation. The top management including managers and supervi-
sors at all level served as translators and executors of the upper
management’s directive. They need to have the ability to commu-
nicate well especially the front-line supervisors.
e) Organizational Culture (RII = 0.8516)
Organizational culture is a set of principles, beliefs and values
that are shared by all members. One of the respondents answered
through an interview saying that the organization should practice
buy-in and support at all levels regarding quality by management
team in order to successfully establishing a culture of quality. The
organization’s culture should be in line with quality.
f) Top Management Commitment (RII = 0.8203)
During the new process of adopting quality management pro-
gram, usually companies will be in the state of confusion, instabil-
ity and resistance in the process. Therefore, top management’
consistency in involvement for all quality program’s activities will
facilitate changing of employee’s attitude towards quality in the
organization.
g) Continuous Improvement (RII = 0.8008)
Continuous improvement can be done by conducting periodic
reviews by internal management. The reviews acted as a medium
where they could detect in which part of the operation, system
or process that can be improved. Random mini audit should also
be carried out extensively through all projects or department to
ensure that all employees practice quality in delivering their ser-
vices or products. As part of the continuous improvement acts,
Quality Assurance and Quality Control team can also be assigned
to support advice and motivate the organizational members to
keep trying in maintaining good product and quality to satisfy
the clients.
h) Customer Related (RII = 0.7969)
Question 5 statement was ‘‘Customer satisfaction information is
an important part of input to quality management system” while
Question 10 statement was ‘‘Customer determine quality and what
to be expected on a service.” 94% of the respondents agreed on Q5
statement, 75% on the Q10 statement, made Customer Related
ranked last in the overall views. These suggested that even though
Customer Focus is one of the important factors in quality or the
customers itself are the quality determinant, other factors over-
come it. To ensure that TQM implementation can be done, cus-
tomer is the least important factor compared to the Employee,
Planning, Teamwork, Communication, Culture, and Management
factors.
6.2.3. The AI of factors affecting TQM implementation
The Average Index (AI) for the factors affecting TQM implemen-
tation is shown in Table 7 below.
Based on the AI result in Table 7 above, it can clearly be seen
that the highest value of the index is on Employee Related factor
(AI = 3.594) which falls under class 4: Strongly Agree (3.5 < Average
Index < 4). This means that generally all 32 respondents strongly
agreed that Employee Related is the most crucial factors in affect-
ing TQM implementation; closely followed by Strategic Planning
(AI = 3.516) and Teamwork (AI = 3.500) factors. This result too sup-
ported the RII findings shown before when Employee Related
ranked as 1 out of the 8 factors and Strategic Planning and Team-
work as 2 and 3 respectively. The rest of the factors fall under class
3: Agree (2.5 < Average Index < 3.5) by the respondents when the
AI result shows the range of 3.187 to 3.484.

Please cite this article as: I. Othman, S. Norfarahhanim Mohd Ghani and S. Woon Choon, The Total Quality Management (TQM) journey of Malaysian build-
ing contractors, Ain Shams Engineering Journal, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asej.2019.11.002
 I. Othman et al. / Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx 7

Table 7
Descriptive statistics of research population.

FACTORS 1: Strongly disagree 2: Disagree 3: Agree 4: Strongly agree AI AVERAGE

Q1 organizational culture 0 2 16 14 3.3750 3.4063
Q6 organizational culture 0 1 16 15 3.4375
Q2 top management commitment 0 2 18 12 3.3125 3.2813
Q9 top management commitment 0 5 14 13 3.2500
Q3 strategic planning 0 1 17 14 3.4063 3.5156
Q7 strategic planning 0 0 12 20 3.6250
Q4 employee related 0 1 7 24 3.7188 3.5938
Q8 employee related 0 1 15 16 3.4688
Q5 customer related 0 2 13 17 3.4688 3.1875
Q10 customer related 1 7 18 6 2.9063
Q11 continuous improvement 1 1 16 14 3.3438 3.2031
Q12 continuous improvement 0 1 16 12 3.0625
Q13 communication related 0 2 14 16 3.4375 3.4844
Q16 communication related 0 1 13 18 3.5313
Q14 teamwork 0 0 10 22 3.6875 3.5000
Q15 teamwork 0 4 14 14 3.3125

6.2.4. The Spearman’s correlation of the respondents’ group
Correlation Test was done using SPSS software by Spearman’s
correlation equation. Spearman’s rank correlation was utilized in
order to assess agreement level amongst the respondents’ group
(client, consultant and contractor) on the factors affecting TQM
implementation. The result of the SPSS analysis at 5% significant
level (two tailed) as shown in Table 8 below.
The statistical analysis results indicate a consensus on the rank-
ings of the factors affecting TQM implementation, as all groups
showed positive correlation. Client/Consultant has moderate corre-
lation (b = 0.573), Client/Consultant has a very strong correlation
(b = 0.909) while Contractor/Consultant showed strong correlation
(b = 0.675). These shows that Client/Consultant group of respon-
dents both ranked the factors similarly and have same perspectives
on TQM factors implementation compared to Client/Contractor
and Consultant/Contractor.
7. Conclusion and future works
7.1. Conclusion
This research has achieved its objectives which are to identify
and rank factors affecting TQM implementation based on Relative
Importance Index (RII), find correlations between Clients, Consul-
tants and Contractors and validate the factors identified using case
study of this research utilizing information obtained from the
respondents.
The rank of factors affecting TQM implementation based on
overall perspectives was identified as follows: (1) Employee
Related, (2) Strategic Planning, (3) Teamwork, (4) Communication
Related, (5) Organizational Culture, (6) Top Management Commit-
ment, (7) Continuous Improvement and (8) Customer Related.
Slight changes occur when analyzed based on companies’ group.
Clients and Contractors agreed on the similar rank for the top three
TQM implementation factors which are (1) Employee Related, (2)
Organizational Culture and (3) Communication Related. However,
Consultants ranked the factors as (1) Teamwork, (2) Employee
Related and (3) Organizational Culture.
The correlation between three group of companies were identi-
fied; Client/Consultant showed highest Spearman correlation
coefficient (b = 0.909) which classified as very strong correlation.
Contractor/Consultant showed strong correlation (b = 0.675) while
Contractor/Client showed moderate correlation (b = 0.573) on
quality management factors. These indicated that Client/Consul-
tant have more similar views on quality management than Cli-
ent/Contractor or Consultant/Contractor.
Finally, this research also was able to give a series of recom-
mendation and a clear quality management framework which
can be followed by the industry practitioners to ensure that Total
Quality Management can be implemented and total quality prod-
ucts can be achieved.
7.2. Recommendation for the future work
To further improve this research and make it more significant in
the future, several future works can be considered. Those future
works are explained below:
(i) High rise or large scale project as case study
The study should be focusing on high rise and large scale project
because those type of projects implement TQM in more specific
method compared to low rise projects. The projects too have more
challenging scenario in term of quality needed to be taken care or
compared to low rise.
(ii) Focus research population
For best results on the subject studied, the questionnaire should
only be distributed to the quality department of particular organi-
zations such as Quality Assurance and Quality Control division
since quality is their expertise. Their opinion and views could be
more valid and reliable.
(iii) Increase the number of respondents
Increasing the number of respondents will boost up reliability
and validity obtained from the questionnaire survey. Larger sample
will give more discrete and focused results.
(iv) Incorporate TQM with Quality Assessment and ISO
For bigger scope in quality management, research on quality
assessment such as QLASSIC and CONQUAS and ISO 9001 can be
done and the researcher could try to find the point of correlation
between them and develop framework out of it.
Data availability statement:
All data, models, or code generated or used during the study are
available from the corresponding author by request (All items).

Table 8
Descriptive statistics of research population. Acknowledgement
Group Client/contractor Client/consultant Contractor/consultant
Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, 32610 Seri Iskandar, Perak,
b 0.573* 0.909* 0.675*
Malaysia, Tel: +6053658000, Fax: +6053656716.

Please cite this article as: I. Othman, S. Norfarahhanim Mohd Ghani and S. Woon Choon, The Total Quality Management (TQM) journey of Malaysian build-
ing contractors, Ain Shams Engineering Journal, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asej.2019.11.002
8 I. Othman et al. / Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx

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Please cite this article as: I. Othman, S. Norfarahhanim Mohd Ghani and S. Woon Choon, The Total Quality Management (TQM) journey of Malaysian build-
ing contractors, Ain Shams Engineering Journal, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asej.2019.11.002