EFFECTS OF CONSTRUCTION PHASE ERRORS ON MAINTENANCE OF SCHOOL BUILDINGS IN GAZA STRIP

The aim of this paper is to identify and rank the construction phase faults/errors affecting the maintenance of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)'s schools buildings in Gaza Strip, and to propose recommendations for minimizing and preventing the reoccurrence of such problems. A survey was conducted to collect the required data and then used to identify the important factors leading to the identified defects noticed to have emanated during the project initiation and construction stages. These include awarding the contract to the lowest bidder at the expense of performance indicator, excessive and repetitive usage of old formworks, lack of adequate qualitative control in painting, water supply and sewage network, speedy construction to obviate delay. This research recommends that a strict quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) program should be implemented by the parties to construction to insure that project execution complies with the latest economical and practical specifications. The project execution could be increased through effective project management during the procurement, execution while developing the quality control strategies to ensure that the service life of the project is long without compromising the stability, safety and reducing the overall maintenance cost.