This Master Thesis is made by Ilzan Alilovic, who is studying Civil Engineering – Management in the Building Industry, at Aalborg University. The Thesis is named “Failures and Defects in the Danish Building Industry”, and it deals with the failures and defects that are showing in the execution phase of a building process.
The Master Thesis consists of 5 main parts. The first part is a description of the Danish Building Industry. In this part the economic benefits of having such a strong Industry in the Danish society are described.
The next part consists of multiple definitions upon the terms “failure” and “defect”, and how they are viewed upon in the Danish Building Industry. The third part are then a description of the current situation according to failures and defects in the Danish Building Industry. Multiple reliable sources are used to find out exactly how the current situation is. Based on the research of this topic, it can be concluded that Denmark as a country has never had so many failures and defects in their buildings as they do nowadays. This led to the projects problem statement which is: “What are the main reason/-s that the number of defects and failures in the Danish society are so high today?”
This question has tried to be answered, by analyzing 5 different points, which the author believed had the most to do with the problem statement. These 5 points are:
1) Subcontractors
2) Quality assurance
3) Schedule Plans
4) Building owner and users
5) Poor project material
At the end of this Master Theses it was further discussed how to reduce the number of defects and failures in the Danish Building Industry. Simple steps were thought of and commented upon. These steps are not there to eliminate failures and defects in the building industry completely but should more likely be viewed as a steppingstone into a future with less defects and better-quality buildings. After the discussion a part was written on ideas how to do further studies, with this topic. The author recommended that one can try to look further from the execution phase, for example the project phase. Another recommendation was that one could try to be assigned to a specific building project. Here it would be possible to go around and note down the number of defects and failures, and after that data could be extracted and used to further make more in-depth going analysis on the issue.