Improving on-site materials tracking for inventory management in construction projects

Construction materials constitute a large portion of the total cost in construction projects. It may account for 50-60% of the total project cost. As the cost of materials is important, the management of materials especially at the inventory level are crucial for the successful project completion. The tracking and locating of materials in construction jobsites has increase a great concern among construction entities. The improper handling and storage of materials in construction site has made it difficult to track and locate materials when the time they are needed. The on-site materials tracking and locating are made complicated by the use of traditional tracking process which is labour intensive, error-prone, unreliable and contribute to the increase in construction costs. Thus, this paper provides a review of the existing issues in material tracking of inventory management process in construction projects. The findings reveal that there is a need for more sophisticated technology to be implemented in construction project in order to facilitate materials tracking process and at the same time, reduce dependency on paper-based reports in inventory management.

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