Quality management system framework for construction companies in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

The construction sector in Saudi Arabia is the largest and fastest-growing market in the Gulf region. However, there are considerable quality service gaps that affect the overall performance of the construction projects. Achieving a high quality for construction projects is strongly associated with managing interrelated organisational processes and the company-specific practice and culture. Under this context, this paper develops a quality management system (QMS) for Saudi construction companies. The QMS is developed based on three primary sources: literature review, case studies on real-world practices of QMS implementations in Saudi Arabia and ISO 9001. The study results demonstrate that the application of the QMS needs to consider five main components: top management commitment, facilitation of QMS application, company and project-based QMS, and evaluation and correction. The proposed QMS model can equally be implemented in culturally and economically similar countries like KSA.