Quality Engineering

ISSN: 0898-2112 (Print) 1532-4222 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/lqen20

Analyzing supplier quality management practices

in the construction industry

Rufaidah Y. AlMaian, Kim LaScola Needy, Kenneth D. Walsh, Thaís da C. L.

Alves & Natalie M. Scala

To cite this article: Rufaidah Y. AlMaian, Kim LaScola Needy, Kenneth D. Walsh,
Thaís da C. L. Alves & Natalie M. Scala (2016) Analyzing supplier quality management
practices in the construction industry, Quality Engineering, 28:2, 175-183, DOI:
10.1080/08982112.2015.1086927

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08982112.2015.1086927

Published online: 05 Nov 2015.

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 QUALITY ENGINEERING
, VOL. , NO. , –
http://dx.doi.org/./..

Analyzing supplier quality management practices in the construction industry

Rufaidah Y. AlMaiana , Kim LaScola Needyb , Kenneth D. Walshc , Thaís da C. L. Alvesc , and Natalie M. Scalad
a
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Kuwait University, Khaldeya, Kuwait; b Department of Industrial Engineering, University of
Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas; c Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, San Diego State University, San Diego,
California; d Department of e-Business and Technology Management, Towson University, Towson, Maryland

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Supplier quality management (SQM) is an important function in the construction industry. Many analytic hierarchy process;
Downloaded by [Indian Institute of Management - Lucknow] at 03:34 02 June 2016

construction organizations place high importance on using quantitative analyses to select effective construction industry;
SQM practices that ensure that materials, assemblies, and fabricated equipment for the construction multivariate data analysis;
principal component analysis
project are within quality specifications. However, traditional quantitative analysis methods may be
(PCA); supplier quality
limited because the process of acquiring enough data to conduct the analyses is time consuming and management (SQM)
costly. This article discusses the use of principal component analysis (PCA) to analyze a number of
SQM practices from construction organizations known for their effective SQM. PCA is useful in this
study because the data available for analysis are small in size and multivariate. SQM practices are
discussed extensively and validated with subject matter experts (SMEs) using the analytical hierar-
chy process (AHP). We show that supplier’s work observation, supplier performance rating, inspection
effort tracking, and inspection and testing plans are important practices for SQM. We propose a quan-
titative methodology that can be used by quality engineers to analyze small sample size data. The
research also describes how AHP, an analysis method based on expert judgment, can be used to vali-
date and support the conclusions drawn from small sample size analyses. Identification of important
SQM practices can benefit construction professionals with limited resources.

Introduction
This article examines the most effective processes
and practices for ensuring that project materials and
equipment are (1) produced, manufactured, or fabri-
cated in strict accordance with all applicable specifi-
cations and (2) delivered to the project site without
any need for rework. This research is part of a larger
project that examines and identifies effective supplier
quality management (SQM) practices from construc-
tion organizations by using multiple data sources.
Data were collected from a range of quantitative and
qualitative sources, including related literature, struc-
tured interviews, SQM documents, and supplier focus
groups. Construction owners, contractors, and sup-
pliers served as subject matter experts (SMEs); these
experts are member organizations in the Construc-
tion Industry Institute (CII). The sampled construc-
tion organizations perform mainly engineer–procure–
construct projects. A data collection instrument to
obtain quantitative information about SQM practices
and performance for individual purchase order (PO)
data (PO instrument) was also designed for the larger
study; this instrument is the main data source and sub-
ject of this article.
Research motivation
Supplier quality management in the construction
industry is a system of processes and practices applied
by the project organization to ensure that the quality of
fabricated materials and equipment meet the project’s
requirements and specifications (Caldas et al. 2012).
SQM in the construction industry is complex due to the
irregular nature of every project in terms of its scope
and life cycle. In addition, improving SQM is challeng-
ing because of the constraints of limited resources of
time, budget, and technical capabilities (AlMaian et al.
2013). The effectiveness of SQM within the construc-
tion industry varies from one organization to the other.
Organizations with highly effective SQM use consistent
practices for managing their suppliers (Walsh, Needy,
and Alves 2014). On the other hand, organizations with

CONTACT Rufaidah Y. AlMaian ralmaian@gmail.com Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering, College of Engineering & Petroleum,
Kuwait University, P.O. Box , Safat , Kuwait.
©  Taylor & Francis
 176 R. Y. ALMAIAN ET AL.
less effective SQM are still facing difficulties in defin-
ing, standardizing, and improving their practices. In
this article, we analyze a number of SQM practices that
have significant impact on quality, based on research
conducted by Neuman (2014). The aim is to deter-
mine the most important practices that help organiza-
tions improve their SQM. The identification of effec-
tive SQM practices is important in guiding organiza-
tions to focus efforts on practices that yield high return
on resource investment to achieve the best quality and
avoid waste associated with rework of any kind (such
as redesigning components, accepting deviations, fix-
ing mistakes, and refabricating items). The practices
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discussed as part of this study can also be applied to
other engineering fields such as aerospace and ship-
building because they are not exclusive to the construc-
tion industry. These extensions and parallels to other
industries are discussed in AlMaian et al. (2013).
In the context of construction organizations, the
availability of data to analyze SQM practices is a
challenge. Organizations usually keep track of indica-
tors related to cost and time, but data for these and
other SQM-related indicators are stored within differ-
ent departments and various data collection systems
(Walsh, Needy, and Alves 2014). This challenge is not
unique to the construction industry and is common for
industries where data are limited due to economic and
time constraints. Limitations in acquiring data include
complicated quality tests and experiments, which leads
to small sample sizes. The literature has begun to exam-
ine impacts of small sample size. For example, Freeman
(2011) used maximum likelihood estimators to study
a small sample size of failure data. In another study,
Khoo (2005) studied process dispersion monitoring in
the manufacturing industry by analyzing the effective-
ness of quality control charts based on experiments of
small sample size. The research presented in this arti-
cle faces similar challenges with small sample size data.
Generally within the construction industry, lack of data
availability in the SQM process is well known and is due
to both time constraints and the complexity of collect-
ing data from several projects (Walsh, Needy, and Alves
2014).
SQM practices
The PO instrument designed for this study was tested
prior to distributing the instrument to the partici-
pating companies. An initial e-mail was sent to 29
industry members of the CII. The industry members
were asked to share and circulate the PO instrument
with other companies and personal connections in
order to encourage participation in the larger study.
The circulating e-mail contained an online access link
to the PO instrument along with information regard-
ing the confidentiality processes and policies adopted
(Neuman 2014).
The PO instrument collected data about practices
used for the selection of suppliers, tracking of pur-
chase orders, communication with suppliers, installa-
tion of the products supplied in construction projects,
and the resulting quality associated with these prac-
tices. The number of responses received was 108, and
each response represented data from a single PO. The
responses were drawn from actual data (not estima-
tion). The project size of the submitted POs ranges
from $600,000 to $52,000,000,000. Details regarding
the design protocol and responses to the PO instru-
ment can be found in Neuman (2014). The PO instru-
ment asked participants about the use of SQM prac-
tices, such as observing and inspecting supplier’s work
and projecting inspection costs to determine their
effect on detecting nonconformances (NCs; quality
problems) per total PO value (NCs/$).
Neuman (2014) analyzed the PO instrument data
and performed tests of hypotheses and correlation
analyses. Neuman’s analyses included cases in which
data were parsed by material type and PO criticality.
The PO data were also categorized according to the per-
ceived effectiveness of the organizations’ SQM systems.
In this regard, a series of focus groups and structured
interviews revealed a subset of construction organiza-
tions widely regarded as having highly effective SQM
(Walsh, Needy, and Alves 2014). In general, the organi-
zations with highly effective SQM perform an advanced
process characterized by consistent use of a wide range
of SQM practices and were distinguished in the results
variables by their ability to prevent, find, and correct
NCs. The PO analysis effort aided in discovery of activ-
ities that organizations with highly effective SQM are
doing in comparison to other organizations. In total, 31
of 108 responses of the PO instrument were from orga-
nizations with highly effective SQM. This article con-
tinues the research presented in Neuman (2014) and
focuses on a subset of closed-ended questions in the
PO instrument about SQM practices for organizations
with highly effective SQM. Each question had a list of
possible answers from which the respondents selected
 QUALITY ENGINEERING 177

Table . Summary of the exploratory variables. lessons learned meetings, to discuss quality issues.
Closed-ended We extend the previous study by selecting the most
questions from the Possible important SQM practices for the construction industry
SQM practices PO survey answers
through a quantitative approach. The analysis can pro-
Supplier’s work Did you have a person Full time
observation in the supplier’s
vide insights to construction organizations on how to
facility to observe best invest their limited resources on the most impor-
the supplier’s work?
Part time tant SQM practices.
Occasionally
Final only
Not at all
Inspection effort Do you track hours, Hours
tracking cost, or both, none? Principal component analysis methodology
Cost
Cost and hours
None
The data under analysis, responses from organiza-
Inspection and testing Was there a quality Yes tions with highly effective SQM, are multivariate with
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planning (ITP) control plan/ITP No

used for this specific
PO?
Supplier’s performance Did you conduct a Yes
rating (after performance rating No
executing the work of the supplier after
by the supplier) execution?
Inspection cost Did you project the Yes
projection cost of your No
inspection effort
with this supplier
for this PO?
the answer that best described their situation. Table 1
describes the questions and corresponding SQM prac-
tices. These practices were found by Neuman (2014) to
have significant impact on detecting NCs.
Each of the five practices is summarized below:
1. Supplier’s work observation: Supervising the sup-
pliers, full time or part time, to ensure that they
are meeting the project quality requirements.
2. Inspection effort tracking: Using tracking mea-
sures to determine the effort spent in inspection,
such as hours or dollars spent.
3. Inspection and testing planning (ITP): Using
plans developed in concert with suppliers for
inspection and quality control at the beginning
of each project.
4. Supplier’s performance rating (after executing
the work by the supplier): Evaluating the per-
formance of the suppliers after fabricating the
product.
5. Inspection cost projection: Estimating the costs
associated with inspection visits.
Neuman (2014) showed that organizations with
highly effective SQM conduct these practices more
frequently than the other organizations and detect
NCs earlier in the project life cycle process. In addi-
tion, these organizations perform quality process meet-
ings more consistently with their suppliers, such as
small sample size. We have 31 data points and five
exploratory variables representing the SQM practices,
as shown in Table 1. The objective is to recommend the
most important SQM practices for construction indus-
try practitioners in order to improve the quality of sup-
plier quality management systems.
The literature addresses multivariate data tech-
niques with small sample size. However, most arti-
cles are focused on identifying the difference between
groups of data. Examples include Bathke, Harrar, and
Madden (2008) and Harrar and Bathke (2008), who
used statistical comparisons of multivariate data with
small sample size. Saranadasa and Altan (1998) and
Frömke, Hothorn, and Kropf (2008) used permutation
algorithms to test the difference between multivariate
treatments. A number of techniques for multivariate
data with small sample size are also addressed in the
literature; however, these techniques are mainly statis-
tical analyses to test the differences between groups of
data. Examples can be found in Hoyle (1999) and Mad-
dala and Lahiri (2009).
Cliff (1987) and Grimm and Yarnold (1995)
addressed multivariate data analysis and noted that
both regression modeling techniques and principal
component analysis (PCA) can be used as variable
selection methods. Regression modeling generally
requires 15 to 20 observations for each exploratory
variable (Siddiqui 2013), which is impractical for our
problem, due to the small sample size. In addition, the
sample size of our study is less than 35, so normality
could not be assumed. With regard to the required
number of observations for PCA, the PCA literature
does not discuss the requirements for the minimum
number of observations with respect to the number
of studied variables. However, having the number of
variables exceed the number of observations is not
 178 R. Y. ALMAIAN ET AL.
recommended. Further details can be found in Dun-
teman (1989) and Jolliffe (2002). We selected PCA as
an approach to analyze SQM practices because it is
appropriate for the characteristics of our data set.
PCA reduces the dimensionality of data by trans-
forming the data into a new set of principal compo-
nents, which retain most of the variation present in
all of the original variables (Jolliffe 2002). The PCA
literature contains diverse applications for using the
method to select a number of variables under analy-
sis. For instance, Baciu and Parpucea (2011) studied
the relationship between U.S. crime rates and variables
such as age, education level, and unemployment rate.
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The authors used PCA to identify variables that deter-
mine high crime rates. Other applications of PCA as a
variable selection method include La Parra, Rodriguez-
Loaiza and Namur (2004), who applied PCA in a phar-
maceutical study to detect the potential impurities
(variables) that affect a certain drug substance; Ostyn
et al. (2007), who used PCA to find variables within
multivariate control charts that help detect bad seals for
food packaging; and Das and Mukherjee (2008), who
utilized PCA to find the most important customer pref-
erences to improve product quality.
Application of PCA
By definition, suppose that the full data set contains k
variables, x1 , x2 , . . . , xk measured on n observations.
The set of these k variables, which can be characterized
as a k-dimensional random vector (x1 , x2 , . . . , xk ), can
be linearly transformed into a principal component y.
Any principal component for the full set of data is a lin-
ear combination of all the variables and can be written
as
y = a 1 x1 + a 2 x2 + . . . + a k xk ,
where y is the principal component, and ai s are the
weights (loadings) that maximize the variation in the
linear composite or, equivalently, maximize the sum
of the squared correlations/covariance of the calcu-
lated principal components with the original variables.
PCA can be performed using either the correlation or
covariance matrices between the variables from which
the weight vectors (eigenvectors) are obtained. We will
use the correlation matrix because it is widely applied
within PCA analysis (Jackson 1991).
Application of PCA begins by constructing the cor-
relation matrix. Then the first principal component can
be conducted, y1 , which is a linear combination of the
k variables, x1 , x2 , . . . , xk (i.e., y1 = a11 x1 + a12 x2 +

.. + a1k xk = ki=1 a1i xi ), such that the variance (eigen-
value) of y1 is maximized, and the sum of squared cor-
relations of y1 with the original variables is also max-
imized. Then, the consecutive principal components

are obtained (i.e., ym = ki=1 ami xi for every compo-
nent m) to find the weight vector (am1, am2 , . . . , amk )
such that the remaining variance is maximized. The
important statistics obtained from the PCA are the
weight (eigen) vector (a1 , a2 , . . . ., ak ) associated with
each principal component and its associated variance
(eigenvalue). Further details of the PCA method can be
found in Dunteman (1989), Jackson (1991), and Jolliffe
(2002).
PCA analysis
From the SQM practices for highly effective orga-
nizations identified by Neuman (2014), let x1 : sup-
plier’s work observation, x2 : inspection effort track-
ing, x3 : ITP, x4 : supplier’s performance rating, and x5 :
inspection cost projection. Because PCA transforms
the variables into a reduced set of components that
represent most of the information in the original vari-
ables, and because PCA can be used to select a num-
ber of variables based on selection rules, we apply
it to our SQM practices. Table 2 presents the corre-
lations between the variables from the sample of 31
respondents.
Application of PCA requires that the correlation
coefficient between the variables be not equal to zero
(Dunteman 1989; Jolliffe 2002). As shown in Table 2,
there is some degree of correlation between the vari-
ables. For example, there is a correlation of 0.373
between x2 and x3 (inspection effort tracking and ITP),
indicating a positive relationship between these two
variables.
Table 3 represents the summary of the PCA results
for our data set. Because PCA produces principal com-
ponents that are equal to the number of variables, we
have five principal components. Table 3 also includes
their associated variance (eigenvalue) and proportion
of variance explained for each component. The propor-
tion of the variance explained is calculated by dividing
the variance of the principal component by the number
of variables k; that is, k = 5.
To select a subset of principal components (PCs), we
used Kaiser’s rule, which is a common stopping rule
 QUALITY ENGINEERING 179

Table . Correlations between the variables.

x1 : Supplier’s work x2 : Inspection effort x4 : Supplier’s x5 : Inspection cost
observation tracking x3 : ITP performance rating projection

x1 : Supplier’s work  . . . −.

observation
x2 : Inspection effort  . . .
tracking
x3 : ITP  −. .
x4 : Supplier’s  .
performance rating
x5 : Inspection cost 
projection

Table . PCA results.

Variables y1 y2 y3 y4 y5
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x1 : Supplier’s work observation . − . − . − . − .

x2 : Inspection effort tracking . . . − . .
x3 : ITP . − . . . .
x4 : Supplier’s performance rating . . − . . .
x5 : Inspection cost projection . . . − . − .
Variance (eigenvalue) . . . . .
Proportion of variance explained (%) . . . . .
Cumulative variance . . . . .

in the PCA literature based on the size of variances
of principal components (Jackson 1991; Jolliffe 2002).
Kaiser’s rule retains only the PCs whose variances
(eigenvalues) are greater than unity. Thus, according
to Table 3, principal components y1 , y2 , and y3 are
retained. These three principal components account
for 87.4 percent of the total variance. The three prin-
cipal components are
y1 = 0.301x1 + 0.621x2 + 0.375x3
+0.340x4 + 0.517x5
y2 = −0.681x1 + 0.099x2 − 0.489x3
+0.219x4 + 0.489x5
y3 = −0.393x1 + 0.094x2 + 0.485x3
−0.735x4 + 0.248x5 .
To select a subset of variables from the retained
PCs above, we chose the variable that has the high-
est absolute weight (loading); that is, ami in each prin-
cipal component ym , as shown in bolded text in the
above equations. As described in Jolliffe (2002), the
selection of one variable that has the highest abso-
lute weight from each retained PC preserves most of
the variability given by this particular PC. Further dis-
cussion regarding variable selection guidelines can be
found in Jolliffe (1972, 1973), Jackson (1991), and Al-
Kandari and Jolliffe (2001). Thus, from Table 3 and
the equations above, x2 , x1 , andx4 , respectively, inspec-
tion effort tracking, supplier’s work observation, and
supplier’s performance rating, are the selected variables
from the PCA analysis.
Results and discussion
To evaluate the robustness of our analysis, especially
with a smaller number of data points (n), we randomly
selected two thirds of the data points; that is, 21 data
points. Summary results of this PCA analysis are pre-
sented in Table 4.
As shown in Table 4, we have three principal compo-
nents with a variance greater than 1—y1 , y2 , and y3 —
which account for 93.5 percent of the total variabil-
ity. Following the same procedure described earlier, we
found x2 , x1 , and x4 , as variables of interest, namely,
supplier’s work observation, inspection effort tracking,
and supplier’s performance rating. Note these are the
same variables that were found using all data.
In order to validate the findings from the PCA
analysis, we invited SMEs representing organizations
with highly effective SQM to participate in phone
interviews. The SME selection process is discussed
in AlMaian (2014). Two SMEs representing orga-
nizations with highly effective SQM agreed to be
interviewed to describe the importance of the SQM
practices within construction projects. The SMEs
represented CII member organizations as contractors.
 180 R. Y. ALMAIAN ET AL.

Table . PCA results using  data points. Table . Numerical scale for pairwise comparisons in AHP.
Variables y1 y2 y3 y4 y5 Preference number
Practice x is … as (than) y assigned
x1 : Supplier’s work . . − . − . − .
observation Equally as important 
x2 : Inspection . − . . . − . Weakly more important 
effort tracking Strongly more important 
x3 : ITP . . . . . Very strongly more important 
x4 : Supplier’s . − . − . . − . Absolutely more important 
performance
rating
x5 : Inspection cost . − . . − . .
projection the problem under analysis has a manageable num-
Variance . . . . .
(eigenvalue)
ber of alternatives (i.e., practices, policies, or any alter-
Proportion of . . . . . native courses of action) to compare, then AHP is an
variance
explained (%) effective method, because it has a simple methodol-
Cumulative . . . . . ogy to conduct the pairwise comparisons (Goodwin
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and Wright 2009). In accordance with standard AHP

The interviewed SMEs hold positions in their organi-
zations as corporate manager of supplier quality and
manager of project management and operations. Each
SME has more than 25 years of experience in the con-
struction industry The SMEs were asked to determine
the most important SQM practices within the SQM
systems of their organizations, using the questions in
Table 1. To avoid bias and influence, the SMEs did
not know the results obtained from the PCA analysis.
The SMEs reported that relative importance of prac-
tices differs from one project to the other, depending
on many factors. These factors include, but are not lim-
ited to, construction organizations selecting the suppli-
ers for the first time versus past working relationships
with these suppliers. The SMEs reported that for every
project, ITP (x3 ), supplier’s work observation (x1 ), and
inspection effort tracking (x2 ) are the most important
SQM practices. For consecutive projects dealing with
the same supplier, the SMEs reported that supplier’s
performance rating (x1 ) is very important, because this
practice is usually used in future projects to determine
the required amount of supplier surveillance. These
results are similar to the PCA analysis but do also
include ITP.
Therefore, we then used the analytic hierarchy pro-
cess (AHP) to further analyze and validate the most
important SQM practices. The purpose of using AHP
in this research is to assist the decision makers and
practitioners in the construction industry in under-
standing the relative importance of the SQM practices
based on the SMEs judgment. AHP is widely used to
structure a complex decision problem (Saaty 1994),
and it has diverse applications such as project plan-
ning, policies selection, and portfolio management. If
practice, we used Saaty’s fundamental scale of abso-
lute numbers (Saaty 1994) for the pairwise compar-
isons; Table 5 describes this scale. For our study, the
five SQM variables are compared in pairs. The deci-
sion maker is then asked to identify the variable that
is most important and then how much more impor-
tance that variable has. For example, comparing ITP
(x3 ) and supplier performance rating (x4 ), if a decision
maker found ITP to be weakly more important, then
we assign a value of 3 to the comparison. The benefit
of AHP is that decision makers can voice their pref-
erences, which leads to an understanding of the rela-
tive importance of the alternatives being evaluated, in
this case SQM practices. Oftentimes decision makers
are fully unaware of all preferences due to subconscious
bias or unclear understanding. The AHP enables dis-
covery of true relative importance.
One of the initial two SMEs was interviewed for
a pairwise comparison elicitation. The SME was pro-
vided with a matrix to enter the preference number for
each pairwise comparison of practices. Table 6 presents
the pairwise comparisons provided by the SME. The
upper triangular portion of the table is the elicited
pairwise comparisons; the bottom triangular portion is
the reciprocals of each pairwise comparison, following
standard AHP practice. The consistency ratio for these
comparisons is 0.01, which is within the limit of 0.10 as
proposed by Saaty (1994).
As shown in Table 6, supplier’s work observation is
equally as important as ITP. In addition, these two prac-
tices are strongly more important than inspection cost
projection. Following the AHP methodology, the pref-
erence numbers of each column in Table 6 should be
normalized by dividing the value of each cell by the
sum of the column. This will result in determining the
 QUALITY ENGINEERING 181

Table . Pairwise comparisons provided by the SME.

x1 : Supplier’s work x2 : Inspection effort x4 : Supplier’s x5 : Inspection cost
observation tracking x3 : ITP performance rating projection

x1 : Supplier’s work . . . . .

observation
x2 : Inspection effort . . . . .
tracking
x3 : ITP . . . . .
x4 : Supplier’s . . . . .
performance rating
x5 : Inspection cost . . . . .
projection
Total . . . . .

Table . Resulting normalized pairwise comparisons and priority weights for SQM practices.
x4 : Supplier’s
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x1 : Supplier’s x2 : Inspection performance x5 : Inspection

work observation effort tracking x3 : ITP rating cost projection Row total Priority weight

x1 : Supplier’s . . . . . . .

work observation
x2 : Inspection . . . . . . .
effort tracking
x3 : ITP . . . . . . .
x4 : Supplier’s . . . . . . .
performance
rating
x5 : Inspection . . . . . . .
cost projection
Total       

priority weights for the practices, which indicates the
importance ranking. Table 7 shows the resulting matrix
values after normalizing the columns. Table 7 also
shows the total sum for each row, as well as the average
value, which is the total row sum divided by the num-
ber of SQM practices (row total/5). The average value
is the priority weight for each SQM practice.
As shown in Table 7, supplier’s work observation
(x1 ) and ITP (x3 ) have the same highest priority with
a value of 0.353, supplier’s performance rating (x4 ) has
the second highest priority with a value of 0.152, fol-
lowed by inspection effort tracking (x2 ) with a value of
0.087. Inspection cost projection, x5 , has the least pri-
ority with a value of 0.054.
The SME reported that inspection cost projection
is only an estimate and does not add value to the
SQM process. The AHP analysis only includes the five
SQM practices listed in Table 7. If more SQM practices
are required to be examined using AHP, then a new
data collection process of the PO instrument design
and distribution must be applied. Therefore, the results
obtained from Table 7 should not be affected by poten-
tial rank reversal.
In summary, the PCA analysis identified x2 ,
x1 , and x4 , specifically, supplier’s work observation,
inspection effort tracking, and supplier’s performance
rating, as the most important SQM practices. The
AHP analysis and SME interviews added ITP (x3 ) as
an important variable, just as important as supplier’s
work observation. The AHP analysis reflects the SMEs’
general assessments and confirms x2 , x1 , andx4 as
variables of interest. We confirm that x5 , inspection
cost projection, is not a variable of interest. The results
were obtained through expert elicitation of the SMEs
and AHP analysis, providing strong empirical support,
especially for small sample sizes.
Conclusions and future work
Within the construction industry, there are many SQM
practices to help improve the quality of materials sup-
plied to construction projects. However, the choice of
one practice over the other using quantitative analysis
techniques may not be easy due to limited data. This
research aims to quantitatively identify important prac-
tices for SQM. First, we used PCA to select the most
important SQM practices using data collected from
organizations with highly effective SQM systems. Then,
SMEs representing organizations with highly effective
SQM were interviewed and analyzed to provide a better
 182 R. Y. ALMAIAN ET AL.
understanding of the relative importance of the SQM
practices.
This research contributes a quantitative approach
that can be used within quality engineering to ana-
lyze multivariate data with small sample size. In gen-
eral, results drawn from a small sample size analy-
sis should be carefully interpreted and validated to
avoid inaccurate conclusions. Therefore, this research
includes discussion with SMEs from organizations with
highly effective SQM systems to elicit their judgment
with regard to the importance of the SQM practices
under study, in order to validate the results of PCA.
This article also contributes an AHP analysis to be
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used by quality engineers and construction profession-
als to validate quantitative results. In general, an AHP
can be used as a validation mechanism for small sam-
ple size quantitative analyses. In addition, AHP can
aid in understanding of the relative importance of any
quality practices or actions by using expert knowl-
edge judgment. In this research, both analyses, PCA
and AHP, suggested that supplier’s work observation,
inspection effort tracking, and supplier’s performance
rating are SQM practices of interest. Contributions to
the quality engineering field include suggesting that
PCA be used for small sample size analyses and propos-
ing AHP to both strengthen the conclusions drawn
from small sample size analysis and help the decision
makers understand the relative importance of the stud-
ied practices (variables). The findings of this article
can benefit researchers and professionals in the con-
struction industry by enabling identification of invest-
ment in the most important SQM practices to be imple-
mented within construction projects. The analysis and
discussion with the SMEs identified supplier’s per-
formance rating as an important practice because it
provides suppliers with important information about
previous performance to help them learn from mis-
takes that cause quality problems and hence pre-
vent these problems reoccurring in future projects.
Observing supplier’s work during execution will help
construction organizations detect quality problems.
The observation is effective because it involves reg-
ular meetings between the supplier and the contrac-
tor to discuss the work progress and exchange the
updated information. As important as observing sup-
plier’s work, developing inspection and testing plans
are collaborative efforts between the supplier and the
contractor to understand what is required to produce
a product with the required level of quality. Inspection
effort tracking is also an important practice for SQM,
because at the end of each project, construction orga-
nizations can determine the required inspection effort
for future projects dealing with the same suppliers.
The implications of the research for quality mangers
include the importance of considering more than one
data analysis method for evaluating small sample size
data. Conclusions must be built on consensus of sev-
eral data analysis methods, if possible, to ensure that
the suggested recommendations are reliable and valid
for implementation.
This research is limited by a small sample size
to determine important SQM practices. Future work
involves collecting additional data and involving more
SMEs to analyze SQM practices. With multiple SMEs,
another AHP analysis can be done to provide gener-
alizability to the analysis and further investigate the
impact of ITP as identified by the SME in our analy-
sis. The study is focused on the investigation of SQM
practices from construction organizations (contrac-
tors) performing mainly engineer–procure–construct
projects. The research can be extended with data from
organizations with a different focus (e.g., commercial,
residential, specialty contractors), to ensure replication
of the results for other types of contractors in the con-
struction industry.
Other future work includes synthesizing the effec-
tive SQM practices into a framework for implemen-
tation within construction projects, in order to guide
construction organizations on how and when to imple-
ment these practices within the project life cycle. These
SQM practices can also be analyzed in terms of their
impact on quality and ease of implementation to help
construction organizations select the important SQM
practices to improve quality.
Acknowledgments
The article presents findings from research supported by the
Construction Industry Institute (CII), as part of Research Team
308, Achieving Zero Rework through Effective Supplier Quality
Practices. The team is composed of academic researchers from
industrial and civil/construction engineering and subject matter
experts, representing CII member organizations as construction
owners, contractors, and suppliers.
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