Contract administration practices of District Assemblies (case study of Mampong Municipal Assembly)

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Date
2015-04-14
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Abstract
The Municipal Assembly being the central institution within the Municipalit y in charge of planning, implementation and management of development projects, has the responsibility of ensuring compliance with contract terms and conditions, managing changes, completing projects on time and within budgets and also to the required quality standard. Quarterly Progress Reports on construction projects submitted by Mampong Municipal Assembly to Ashanti Regional Coordinating Council between 2009 and 2011 showed that 75% of these projects which were supposed to be completed in six calendar months are still captioned “on-going” projects. It is against this background that the researcher has considered the study into Contract Administration Practice very necessary . The aim of this research is to identify the difficulties faced by Municipal Assemblies in the management of their building construction projects. The objectives also are to identify and document the existing contract administration practice, identify inhibitions to effective contract administration practice, determine factors that underline the identified inhibitions and consequently propose recommendations to the existing practice. The study is focused at the contract implementation stage of building construction projects of Mampong Municipal Assembly, where no external consultant was employed and with funding from the District Development Facility. In order to achieve the objectives of the research, a systematic procedure in conducting this study had been structured. Structured interviews were conducted with 20 staff members of Municipal Assembly in charge of project supervision, and 10 building contractors who have worked or are still working on District Development Facility projects. Statistical Package for iii Social Sciences (SPSS) and Microsoft Excel were used for the organisation of the data presentation, description and analysis. The results revealed that both contractors and staff of the Municipal Assemblies are well informed on the rights, duties and liabilities of a building team; pre construction meetings were not organized before commencement of works; resident engineers or clerk of works are not permanently stationed on each project site; and that would have a toll on the quality of work produced. Based on the results of this research, it is recommended that there is an essentia l need to equip the W orks Department with logistics and staff; pre construction meeting should be held before work begins, regular site meetings should be organized; and finally an officer should be stationed permanently on each project site whilst works are going on concurrently.
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A thesis submitted to the Department of Building Technology in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Master of Science (MSc) in Construction Management.
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