International Journal of Construction Management

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Assessment of critical factors contributing to

construction failure in Yemen

Yaser Gamil & Ismail Abdul Rahman

To cite this article: Yaser Gamil & Ismail Abdul Rahman (2018): Assessment of critical factors
contributing to construction failure in Yemen, International Journal of Construction Management,
DOI: 10.1080/15623599.2018.1484866

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15623599.2018.1484866

Published online: 01 Oct 2018.

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT
https://doi.org/10.1080/15623599.2018.1484866

ARTICLE

Assessment of critical factors contributing to construction failure in Yemen

Yaser Gamil and Ismail Abdul Rahman
Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Johor, Malaysia

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Yemen construction industry faces immeasurable challenges which result to its deterioration. construction industry;
Almost all projects in Yemen face challenges to attain the preplanned outcomes. This paper Failure factors; Yemen
aims to uncover and assess the critical factors causing failure to the construction industry. At ini-
tial study?s stage, a comprehensive literature investigation on academic articles was carried out
to determine 62 critical factors causing failures to the industry. Then, a quantitative study was
carried out using questionnaire survey as a method to obtain the data. 5-points Likert type
scales were applied to assess the factors. Then, the factors were categorized into five different
groups. Collected data from the survey was analyzed using SPSS software based on relative
importance index (RII) and standard deviations for ranking purposes. The study found that, the
top ten ranked factors among 62 factors are poor construction management, frequent change
of design, continuous suspension of work, shortage of raw materials, hiring uneducated contac-
tor, low salary for engineers and construction workers, cash flow and financial difficulty, delay of
progress payment to subcontractors, financial difficulty faced by owners and poor financial con-
trol and management. Results from this study are recommended to the Yemeni government in
improving the current state of its construction industry.

Introduction 2018). Similarly, developed countries encounter severe

Construction industry plays a very substantial role in
the development of economic and social life of every
nation (Yılmaz and Kanıt 2018). The construction
industry creates job opportunities; develops infrastruc-
ture, and produces collaboration with other industries.
However, it faces many challenges and lacks of many
progressing factors which certainly cause retrogression
and recession of the industry (Mishmish and El-
Sayegh 2018).
Failures and deficiencies are common issues of
construction industry all over the world. These prob-
lems result in negative impact on human capital, time
and resources (Ahzahar et al. 2011; Zarei et al. 2018).
There are many factors of failure in construction
industry, of these factors includes cost and time over-
runs, conflict among industry parties, and failure of
the projects (Gamil and Rahman 2018). Therefore,
the failure factors and declination of construction
industry differ from country to another which is
interpreted by the development and economic stabil-
ity of the country (Sultan 2005; El Mallakh 2014).
Some countries still face the challenges to obtain the
basic necessities in financing (Damoah and Kumi
issues in construction industry, of these, budgetary
and macroeconomic issues and also issues of adapt-
ability to market conditions and business (Arditi
et al. 2000).
There are several studies on identifying factors
causing construction projects failure. Such studies on
Vietnam construction industry found most 10 crucial
factors causing failure in construction industry are
disregarding the significance of planning stage, diffi-
culty and lack of experience in executing mega con-
struction projects, inefficient design stage and
frequent change of design, lack of knowledge and
ability in managing construction projects, lack of
financial capacity of owner, poor performance of con-
tractors, lack of construction management and organ-
ization systems, corruption and bribery in
construction projects, payment delays and finally eco-
nomic instability with high inflation of currency
(Nguyen and Chileshe, 2013). While in Malaysian
construction industry, the most common factors caus-
ing failure of building projects are low quality of con-
struction materials and shortage of resources
(Ahzahar et al. 2011).

CONTACT Yaser Gamil yaseruthm@yahoo.com

ß 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 Y. GAMIL AND I. ABDUL RAHMAN
A study by Kivrak (2008) on the critical failure fac-
tors of Turkish construction industry found that top
seven critical factors are lack of construction business
experience, the state of economic condition of the
country, lack of managerial experience, personal
attributes, low profit margins, difficulties in winning
projects, and over-trading. However, in Saudi Arabic
construction industry, the most critical factors of fail-
ure to construction industry are poor risk manage-
ment, cost overruns, poor management of
communication and project information, time over-
runs, improper estimation practices, difficulties in
cash flow, design inconsistencies, poor change man-
agement, inefficient project structure and poor team-
work. These mentioned factors align in all the project
phases and require more intention from all project
parties to work closely to avoid these challenges
(Ikediashi et al. 2014). Whereas in United Arab
Emirate (UAE) construction industry, construction
claims seem to be the most common challenge which
has obstruct the completion of construction and
became the main source of delays in delivering proj-
ects (Zaneldin, 2006). In addition, it was found that
leadership is one of the common challenges and has
strongly affected the organizational commitment of
companies in the UAE construction industry (Kasim
and Abdul 2012). In Egypt, the most dominant failure
factors are delay, cost overruns, conflict and improper
planning (Abd El-Razek et al. 2008). In Ghanaian
construction industry, the most severe factors causing
failure are political intervention, time overrun, lack of
bureaucracy, poor supervision, corruption, lack of
leadership skills, poor planning (Damoah and Kumi
2018). In India, the critical factors which affect the
performance of construction industry are conflict
among project parties, socio-economic, climate condi-
tion, lack of knowledge, lack of leadership, unreliable
project conceptualization; and hostile competition in
the tendering (Jha et al. 2006). It is observable that,
the challenges and impediments of construction
industry vary from country to another which mainly
depends on the nature of economic growth, technol-
ogy advancement, culture, expertise, good practices
and richness of resource.
Nevertheless, the investigation of failure factors for
Yemeni construction industry is scanty on the litera-
ture and only recently a qualitative investigation by
Gamil et al. (2017) on the failure factors of Yemeni
mega construction projects with limited number of
respondents found that the most significant failure
factors are lacks of proper accreditation systems to
qualify the credibility of stakeholders, improper
schedule planning and cost estimation and addition-
ally the improper communication and project infor-
mation exchange among construction parties (Gamil
and Rahman 2018). Therefore, this study intended to
identify the failure factors and challenges faced by
Yemen construction industry through quantitative
mode of study whereby the industry lacks of investi-
gative studies on the current issues and factors of its
regression and deterioration.
Methodology
This study was conducted in two different phases
where the first phase aimed to identify factors leading
to failure in construction industry by referring to
published academic literatures. A total of 62 factors
and attributes of failure in construction industry
which were analytically selected for further investiga-
tion in the scenario of Yemeni construction industry.
Then, the second phase was to carry out a quantita-
tive study to assess the factors and collecting data by
means of questionnaire survey amongst practitioners
in Yemen construction industry.
Figure 1 illustrates the sequential process of this
study. The first step is to analyse literatures and pub-
lished academic articles to define the factors causing
failures to construction industry then the factors
underwent similarity check to prevent any duplica-
tions of factors. At that point, questionnaires were
designed and sent to targeted respondents. Finally,
the results were analysed using univariate analysis to
rank the factors based on their significance levels.
The sample size for this study was based on the
finite population approach because the total popula-
tion is less than 50,000 and since no proper statistics
on the number of Yemeni practitioners in Saudi
Arabia who has left Yemen after the crisis in 2015,
therefore, this study implemented the use of infinite
approach to define the number of respondents
Litrature Investigations
• An intensive investigation was carried out to identify
the factors causing declination and failure to
construction industry.
Pre-analysis of Identified Factors
• The factors were analyzed for similarity analysis to
reduce and eliminate any repitition of factors
• The factors were grouped into distincts categories
Questionaire Survey
• Questionaire survey was carried out to assess the
imporance of factors using 5 Likert-type scale
Results and Analysis
The use of univariate descriptive statistics was
adopted to analyse the demography of respondents and
rank the factors using RII
Figure 1. Sequential diagram of study methodologies.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT 3

(Gordden, 2004). To provide satisfactory reliability 6 11.3 4

and validity of questionnaire, the questionnaire were
initially evaluated by more than 10 experts who have
been working in construction industry for more
than 20 years. 2
After completing data collection, the data were
validated using reliability test by adopting
25 47.2 1 25
Croncnbach’s alpha as a measure of internal consist-
ency of collected data whereby the range of its value Number of Percentage of Total of Total of valid
Returned Responses (%) Invalid quesons
is between 0 and 1 in which the higher value indicates Quesons quesons
high relative degree of internal consistency for data Consultant Contractor Client
(Tavakol and Dennick 2011). The Cronbach’s alpha Figure 2. Respondents’ organization.
was calculated using SPSS software on the identified
62 factors is 0.912 which is more than 0.7 as a desig-
the respondents are master holders and the highest
nated limit value, therefore, it is considered high and
groups of experience belongs to the category of
satisfied the internal consistency of data and the data
0–10 years with 76% among others categories.
considered reliable and valid to carry out further
analysis (Xin and Rong 2007; Tavakol and Dennick
2011). The following step is to analyse the data. The Data analysis
method used to analyse the data is univariate
In this section, the data collected out of the survey is
analysis using descriptive approach to determine
analysed for relative importance index (RII) and
the rank of each factor using relative importance
standard deviation (STDV) to be used for ranking the
index (RII).
factors from most significant to less significant.
Before, the ranking was carried out; Cronbach’s alpha
Results and analysis was calculated to check the reliability and consistency
of the data. The results of the test found that
Demographic profile of respondents
Cronbach’s alpha value for the five Likert scales is
Respondents for this study are Yemeni engineers and (a ¼ 0.958) which indicates the scales are reliable, sat-
construction practitioners who have worked in isfied and consistent to be used for further analysis
Yemen construction industry. A total number of 130 and investigations. The RII formula was adopted from
questioners were distributed by means of online sur- Enshassi et al. (2009), Abdul Rahman et al. (2013)
vey however 53 responses were returned. Most of and Muhwezi et al. (2014) as follows:
these Yemeni engineers had worked in three different
firms including consulting, contracting and client
firms while in Yemen. The questions were distributed Table 1. Respondents’ profile.
evenly for three different firms. Figure 2 demonstrates Demographic profile Variables Frequency Percentage
the distribution of respondents based on the firms Type of projects handled Residential 18 36
includes client, consultant and contactors. The total Industrial 15 30
Maintenance 4 8
response rate is about 41% of 130 distrib- Infrastructure 12 24
uted questions. Others 1 2
Figure 2 illustrates the distribution of responses Category of company Private 38 76
Governmental 10 20
based on the respondent’s organization. It is shown Others 2 4
that most of responses are from consultant’s firms Role of participants Company director 3 6
Project manager 12 24
which account of 47.2%. Architect 3 6
Table 1 demonstrates the detailed demographic Civil engineer 31 62
Others 1 2
profile of respondents. It is shown that, the highest Level of education High school 0 0
percentage of respondents is working in residential Diploma 3 6
Bachelor degree 22 44
projects and in private firms with percentage of 36% Master degree 23 46
and 76%, respectively. In term of the role of respond- PhD 2 4
Years of experience 0–10 years 38 76
ents, the highest percentage is civil engineers with 11–20 years 10 20
62%. Referring to their education level and number 21–30 years 2 4
years of experience in construction industry, most of 31 years and above 0 0
4 Y. GAMIL AND I. ABDUL RAHMAN
P
W Factor/attribute
RII ¼ ; where ð0  RII  1Þ (1)
AN
In which:
W¼represents the weight assigned for each factor by
respondents ranges from 1 to 5 (in this study, the
range is 1 is given for not significant and 5 for
extremely significant); A¼represents the maximum
weight given (in this study equals 5); N¼represents
the total number of respondents for the study
(Memon and Ismail 2013) and RII ¼ relative
importance index.
The higher relative importance index for each fac-
tor illustrates that the factor has high impact and sig-
nificant (Enshassi and Al Swaity 2015). While
standard deviation is to be used in the case of similar
RII values, factor having smaller STDV is considered
better rank as it indicates that the values given by
respondents are around the mean values.
Most dominant factors causing failure to Yemen
construction industry
In this section, a list of the top 10 ranked for all 62
factors in all the groups are illustrated in Table 2. The
main purpose of listing these factors is to narrow the
study, therefore, it be easy to draw the conclusion
and recommendations.
Table 2 shows a summary of the most dominant
factors among all 62 factors. The first paramount fac-
tor is poor construction management which has 0.86
of RII. It is interpreted that, poor construction man-
agement in Yemen construction industry as the most
causing factor according to the respondent’s opinions.
Over the past, a number of studies have also consid-
ered poor construction management as one of
the most hindrance to construction progressive
development (Chan and Kumaraswamy 1997; Odeh
and Battaineh 2002; Potts and Ankrah 2014;
Walker 2015).
The second ranked factor is frequent changes of
design having 0.80 RII. According to study by Abdul-
Rahman et al. (2015) on the impact of design changes
on construction performance. It was indicated that
design change causes huge impact on other major
problems such as cost and time overruns and there-
fore affect the progress of work along the project
cycles. It was also explained by Mohamad et al.
(2012) that continuous changes and modifications
lead to disputes and this dispute among construction
parties and then develop into the suspension of works
in most cases or even to termination and failure of
the project.
Table 2. Top most dominant causative factors.
Mean STDV RII Rank
Poor construction management
Frequent change of design
4.30
4.02
0.86
1.10
0.86 1
0.80 2
Continuous suspension of work 3.88 1.09 0.78 3
Shortage of raw materials 3.88 0.93 0.78 4
Hiring uneducated contactor 3.88 1.10 0.78 5
Low salary for engineers and construction workers 3.88 1.04 0.77 6
Cash flow and financial difficulty 3.87 1.01 0.77 7
Delay of progress payment to subcontractors 3.86 1.18 0.77 8
Financial difficulty faced by owners 3.82 1.01 0.77 9
Poor financial control and management 3.82 0.98 0.77 10
STDV: standard deviation; RII: relative importance index.
The third factor is continuous suspension of the
work, it is a severe factor whereby cause demotivation
to all relevant parties and resuming the work can sur-
charge more cost to bring back the flow of work. A
study by Gamil et al. (2017), has also considered sus-
pension of work as a major cause of project failure
in Yemen.
The fourth factor is shortage of raw materials, In
Yemen, the industry lacks of machinery to supply raw
material and this might be the cause behind the
shortage and the rise and fluctuation of the material
cost. According to the study by Gamil et al. (2017),
cement factories have stopped many time and that
cause scarcity of cement to supply the construc-
tion industry.
The fifth factors causing declination is hiring
uneducated contactor, in Yemen, there is no defined
set of accreditation of contractors in both class main
and sub and that interprets the reason of hiring
uneducated contractors to take part in major projects.
The sixth factor is low salary for engineers and con-
struction workers and that causes demotivation to
offer good commitments. The seventh factor is cash
flow and financial difficulty that is interpreted due to
the improper cost estimation and poor planning. The
eighth factor is delay of progress payment to subcon-
tractors and that might be interpreted due to the lack
of planning and contractual barriers. The ninth factor
is financial difficulty faced by owners and that might
be due to the economic situation in Yemen; however,
the tenth factor is poor financial control and manage-
ment and that requires more lack of experience and
lack of technological elements in construc-
tion industry.
Governmental and administrative factors
In this group, the factors which are related to any govern-
mental or administrative relevancy were listed and investi-
gated. Table 3 shows the factors related to governmental
and admin category consists of 16 causative factors with
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT 5

statistical analysis of each individual factor. Table 3 shows
the results of ranking the factors based on the RII. It is
shown that the political unrest and poor national security
is considered as the most dominant factor with 0.92 RII. It
is believed that, the political unrest since 2011 has declined
the progress of construction industry. It was declared by
Yaser et al (2016), all the projects have been suspended due
to the unrest in the country. Following the second ranked
factor is political interference in construction industry with
0.84 RII. The reason might be due to the many different
political parties and deviation of their political views and
that caused to disrupt the progress of construction industry
in which the rolling party only hire their allies irrespective
of their capability and quality of works.
Management and leadership related factors
In this group, there are 17 failure factors related to
management and leadership group. Table 4 demon-
strate 17 management and leadership related factors.
Poor construction management ranked the first among
them with 0.86 RII. The second ranked factors are
poor financial control and management, poor commu-
nication management among construction parties and
inaccurate time and cost estimates and planning with
the same RII of 0.77. However, the dispersion of the
mean is different in which Poor financial control and
management has the least standard deviation.
Human resources related factors
and having RII of 0.77. This might be due to the
poor economic management and low budget alloca-
tion for construction industry.
Stakeholders related factors
This section introduces the related factors of con-
struction industry failure from stakeholder’s perspec-
tive. Table 6 lists 17 factors of failure related to
construction parties. The most dominant and first
ranked is frequent change of designs. This might be
due to the misunderstanding and poor information
exchange among construction parties.
From contractor perspective, the first ranked factor is
the continuous suspension of work with 0.78 for RII.
This factor is common in most of the projects in
Yemen it might be due to the poor management of
cash flow or due to the incompetency or inability of
contactors to provide enough machinery and materials.
In fact, suspension of work causes huge problems in
Yemen due to the change of weather and to resume the
work it costs high due to the rain and fluctuations of
weather state.
From client viewpoint, the most critical factor is
the financial difficulty which has RII of 0.77. The
reason might be due to the low income of individu-
als in Yemen or might be to poor estimation of pro-
ject cost. However, from consultant perspective the
dominant factor is Consultant Related Factors

Human resource is an important aspect in the forma- Table 4. Management and leadership related factors.
tion of construction industry. In Yemen, this sector Failure factors Mean STDV RII Rank
has not had enough investigations on its declinations Poor construction management 4.30 0.86 0.86 1
Poor financial control and management 3.82 0.98 0.77 2
and impediments to progress. Table 5 illustrates six Poor communication management 3.82 1.06 0.77 3
common factors causing worsening to human resour- Inaccurate time and cost estimates and planning 3.80 1.07 0.77 4
Lack of quality management systems 3.74 0.99 0.75 5
ces sector. According to Table 5, low salary for con- Inefficient management of project mobilization 3.74 1.05 0.75 6
struction practitioners is considered very important Inefficient and ineffective quality control 3.71 1.10 0.75 7
Ineffective handling of time overruns 3.68 1.02 0.74 8
Poor conflict management 3.67 1.09 0.72 9
Table 3. Governmental and administrative related factors. Poor human resources management 3.62 1.24 0.72 10
Poor management of project information 3.56 0.91 0.71 11
Failure factors Mean STDV RII Rank Selection of incompetent contractors 3.56 1.21 0.71 12
Political unrest and national security 4.62 0.99 0.92 1 Ineffective handling of cost overrun 3.48 1.07 0.70 13
Poor transparency 4.22 0.99 0.84 2 Poor management of contract claims 3.47 1.20 0.70 14
Political interference in construction sector 4.20 1.04 0.84 3 Poor site management and supervision 3.44 1.33 0.69 15
Long governmental bureaucracy 4.12 0.87 0.82 4 Poor management of cultural and social impacts 3.18 1.22 0.64 16
Corruptions 4.12 1.17 0.82 5 Unclear and vague contracts terms 3.16 1.23 0.63 17
Shortage of land ownership 3.90 0.95 0.78 6
Lack of stakeholders’ accreditation system 3.86 1.07 0.77 7
Lack of enforcement 3.86 1.09 0.77 8 Table 5. Human resources related factors.
Administrative weakness 3.86 1.18 0.77 9
Sudden changes of projects scopes 3.80 1.21 0.76 10 Factor/attribute Mean STDV RII Rank
Lack of coordination between construction parties 3.74 1.08 0.75 11 Low salary for engineers and construction workers 3.88 1.04 0.78 1
Lack of approved national systems 3.70 1.19 0.75 12 Low labour productivity due to poor supervision 3.68 1.17 0.74 2
Low budget allocation for construction industry 3.61 1.13 0.70 13 Lack of experts, architects and engineers 3.65 1.21 0.72 3
Unstable national economy 3.52 1.28 0.70 14 Immigration of skilled experts 3.54 1.16 0.71 4
High cost of construction and land 3.38 1.05 0.68 15 Lack of hiring systems and human resources firms 3.46 1.20 0.69 5
Implementation other country standards and codes 3.34 1.17 0.67 16 Shortage of site workers and labours 2.74 1.08 0.68 6
6 Y. GAMIL AND I. ABDUL RAHMAN

Table 6. Stakeholders related factors.

Contractor related factors Mean STDV RII Rank Overall rank
Continuous suspension of work 3.88 1.09 0.78 1 2
Hiring uneducated contactor 3.88 1.10 0.78 2 3
Cash flow and financial difficulty 3.87 1.01 0.77 3 4
Delay of progress payment to subcontractors 3.86 1.18 0.77 4 6
Improper planning and estimation by contractor 3.72 1.18 0.74 5 8
Demand of high margin of profit 3.58 1.05 0.72 6 11
Poor adherence to safety and health guidelines 3.58 1.21 0.72 7 12
Lack of experience 3.54 1.27 0.71 8 13
Recurring mistakes during construction 3.40 1.16 0.68 9 15
Client related factor
Financial difficulty faced by owner 3.82 1.02 0.77 1 5
Lack of experience 3.68 1.11 0.74 2 9
Lack of mutual trust with other parties 3.28 1.21 0.66 3 16
Consultant related factors
Frequent change of design 4.02 1.10 0.80 1 1
Excessive use of construction materials due to traditional design and method 3.74 1.14 0.75 2 7
Lack of consultancy firms 3.68 1.17 0.74 3 10
Mistakes and errors in design 3.42 1.14 0.68 4 14
Lack of experience 3.06 1.13 0.61 5 17

frequent change of design with value of RII of 0.80 Table 8. Rank of dominant groups.
and 4.02. Group Mean STDV RII Rank
Governmental and administrative factors 3.87 1.09 0.77 1
Management and leadership related factors 3.75 1.10 0.73 2
Construction materials and machinery factors Stakeholders related factors 3.72 1.13 0.73 3
Human resources related factors 3.70 1.14 0.72 4
Depletion of construction materials is crucial problem Construction materials and machinery factors 3.68 1.14 0.70 5
faced by many construction industries around the
globe with no exclusion, Yemen faces challenges on lack of well systemized system to administer the
the availability of construction materials and advanced industry (Sultan 2005). Therefore, more attentions
technological machinery. Table 7 demonstrates six from relevant government agencies have to look at
related factors to materials and machinery. Shortage these factors to minimize the effects and improve the
of raw materials ranked number 1 with values of 0.78 state of construction industry.
of RII. This might be due to the scarcity of construc- The second group is management and leadership,
tion materials since Yemen has different ecological this group basically requires more investigation on why
and geographical formations. Southern of Yemen Yemen government does not give full attention into
lacks more than the northern in term of construction the importance of management and leadership skills.
materials because the southern overall area is sandy The third group underlying is stakeholders related fac-
deserts and coastal deposits. tors that was investigated by Gamil et al. (2017) and
pointed out that employing unqualified contractors
Performance of the groups could be the reason why this group considered as a
This part introduces the most dominant group among crucial in the declination of industry. The fourth group
five groups. Table 8 shows the ranking of groups based is human resource related factor and that interpreted
on the overall SD and RII. The first ranked group is no much attention given to human resource and its
group 1 governmental and administrative factors with management. The last group is construction materials
1.09 and 0.77 of STDV and RII, respectively. and machinery factors and those factors considered
The main reason of having governmental and significant due to the lack of machinery to supply the
administrative factors as the most ranked factor is industry with enough materials.
due to the fact that Yemen construction industry has
Conclusions
Table 7. Construction materials and machinery related factors.
Factor/attribute Mean STDV RII Rank This study presented the results of the questionnaire
Shortage of raw materials 3.88 0.93 0.78 1 survey which was carried out among Yemeni engi-
Waste generation 3.80 1.11 0.76 2 neers. The study identified 62 failure factors in
Continuous breakdown of machinery 3.62 1.18 0.72 3
Fluctuation of construction materials prices 3.34 1.24 0.67 4 Yemen construction industry and these factors were
Lack of modern equipment 3.28 1.09 0.66 5 categorized into five different groups. Each group
Late delivery and logistics of materials 3.18 1.27 0.64 6
includes several related factors ranked from most to

least important according to expert’s opinions and
statistics analysis.
The study also concluded that, out of 62 the most
dominant factors of construction failure in Yemen are
(1) poor construction management (2) frequent
change of design (3) continuous suspension of work
(4) shortage of raw materials (5) hiring uneducated
contactor (6) low salary for engineers and construc-
tion workers (7) cash flow and financial difficulty (8)
delay of progress payment to subcontractors (9)
financial difficulty faced by owners and (10) poor
financial control and management. As a result of that,
it is concluded poor construction management with
its counterparts is the most dominant and critical
cause of construction failures in Yemen.
The following items are to be considered and rec-
ommended for further actions and improvements:
1. Corrective measures and strategies have to be ini-
tiated to investigate and suggest solutions for
each factor listed in this study.
2. Continuous investigations have to be carried out
in details on each group to facilitate the proposal
of solutions
3. Comparison of Yemeni construction sector with
successful construction industry in different
countries should be taken into considerations for
further researches and investigations
4. Prioritized imperatives and solutions should be
taken to the most significant factors.
5. An investigation of previous projects has to be
made to define the primitive factors causing the
failures and learn lessons for future projects.
Above all, Yemen construction industry is in dire
need of plans and strategies to progress and move
the industry from its slackness into enliven industry
that can transform the overall economy to progres-
siveness and prosperity. A side with the effort
of researchers, many insight studies have to be car-
ried out to investigate each factor illustrated in
this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
The authors acknowledge the financial support by Centre
of Graduate Studies (CGS), University Tun Hussein Onn
Malaysia and the ministry of higher education in Yemen
for the financial support.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT 7
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