Interface Problems between Owners and Maintenance Contractors in Saudi Arabia

Over the last two decades, Saudi Arabia has experienced an unprecedented boom in construction. This construction has included major infrastructure, along with private and public building facilities. Because the construction of most of these facilities has been completed, their maintenance problems have become mainly the responsibility of the owners and maintenance contractors. The objective of this paper is to study the relationship between owners and maintenance contractors in terms of the interface problems between them. A questionnaire has been developed to determine the main problems between the two parties and to rank the importance of these problems. The questionnaire includes the assessment of the following main problems: lack of accuracy in specification and standards, owners' low budget, unspecified labor skills in the agreement contract, lack of a penalty clause in the contract, inappropriate schedule of payments, lack of a training program for the maintenance team, lack of cost indexes for materials, labor, and equipment to be used by the owner for cost estimation, lack of labor incentives and inaccurate estimation of maintenance costs by contractors. The result of the survey indicates that the lack of direct supervision by the contractor, lack of accuracy in specification and standards, and owners' low budget allocations were ranked the highest in terms of interface problems, while laborers illiteracy was ranked the lowest.