Journals Proceedings

Abstract

The consulting services are very important to the project life of construction projects. When owners select the contract type, they need to analyze the design work and the supervision work to be arranged. Is this service to be carried out by a single consulting firm having the required qualification and capacity? This research presents advantages and disadvantages of appointing the design consultant as construction supervision consultant in the construction industry in Saudi Arabia. A questionnaire was designed that comprised of five project phases including the project inception phase, project planning and design phase, project construction phase, project monitoring and control phase, and project closing phase. Responses of 101 valid questionnaires were collected from construction projects and analyzed by using the SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences-21) for Windows software package. The results indicate that owners, consultants, contractors, and researchers strongly support appointing the same design consultant as supervision consultant. The results indicate that the number of advantages for appointing the design consultant as construction supervision consultant in the industry more than doubles the number of disadvantages of appointing the same design consultant as supervision consultant in the construction industry. Results further show that it is not appropriate to employ different professionals on a project for these two services when close coordination is generally required for the successful completion of the same. Research concludes that there is no harm to appoint a third party for proof engineering and design vetting. This work may be beneficial for owners, consultants and contractors who want good services from designers and consultants on construction projects.