MEASURING PERFORMANCE IN EGYPTIAN CONSTRUCTION FIRMS APPLYING QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

The performance measurement of construction firms is considered as a competitive advantage to develop and improve their performance to have place in the market and stay able to face the continuous challenge. Egyptian construction firms (ECF) started recently to adopt quality management system (QMS) as a way to develop and improve their performance as previous studies showed. However, measuring that performance to include all the firm's aspects in a competitive way is a crucial process for the ECF's culture. The research is trying to indicate the role of the QMS implementation in measuring performance (MP) through developing a model for measuring performance on the organization level, and explore its impact on the organization that adopt quality management system. This model is based on specific elements and their related indicators which have been derived from national approaches and models of measuring performance (benchmarking, quality awards and six sigma).Elements determination and the status of their real practice has been investigated through a questionnaire to a representative sample of ECF. This model determines the performance level (PL) of the organization that measured by a mean of a point system. Weights of the elements in the point system considered both the elements' importance in the international models and its real practice in the Egyptian construction firms. So, the final outcome of the model reveals the level of firm performance that helps the firm to identify the weak points against the strong ones, Confirm the priorities and identify new opportunities for developing, and Check the position of the company in the market among the others. Another questionnaire has been developed to be distributed on a group of Experts on measuring performance for the purpose of model validation. The majority of surveyed experts agreed that the proposed model can be applied effectively.