Foreign building cos will improve Israeli standards

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58% of respondents in an Israeli construction industry survey said construction standards in Israel were inferior to Western standards.

Do not be misled by the increasingly common fancy towers, double lobbies, kitchen and bath standards in Israeli residential construction, or by the colorful walls in the rooms - the quality of construction in Israel is awful. Not only does construction take too long in Israel (an average of 30 months per housing unit), with criminally negligent safety standards on building sites (15 fatal accidents in the first quarter and only 17 inspectors responsible for 13,000 sites nationwide), but the housing unit that eventually comes out of it is unacceptable, certainly at the current prices.

In honor of Building Week at the Israel Building Center in Tel Aviv, 350 working in the sector were interviewed about the quality of construction in Israel. Although their own livelihood was involved, 58% of them admitted that construction in Israel was far below the standard in Western countries. 4% stated that construction was at the level of the non-industrialized countries.

What is the reason? People in the sector cited three main causes: unprofessional personnel, an absence of close supervision of building sites, and cost-cutting by performance contractors. These reasons are inherent, and are not expected to change in the near future. The government and the contractors have not really succeeded in bringing trained foreign workers to Israel or training Israeli workers to correct the defects, and the performance contractors' gross profit margins of at most 5% do not allow them to be more flexible in their cost-cutting.

Furthermore, 28% said that the inadequate quality of construction is a result of poor advance planning. 23% believe that the technologies in the Israeli construction sector are not sufficiently advanced.

Waiting for foreigners

The Israel Builders Association has been waging war in recent weeks against the cabinet's plans to bring foreign construction companies to Israel. Nevertheless, 55% of the respondents in the construction industry survey admit that the introduction of foreign companies will improve the quality of construction in Israel. Although Minister of Construction and Housing Yoav Galant and Minister of Finance Moshe Kahlon believe that bringing foreigners will also help reduce housing prices, 58% of those questioned predicted that this would not lower prices.

In any case, the most prominent consensus concerns industrial construction. 83% of respondents believe the use of industrial methods in residential construction should be increased. Why has this not happened yet, at a time when the world is increasing adopting industrial construction methods (apartments that come from the factory almost ready for finishing)? Almost 40% accuse Israeli apartment buyers, who are wary of industrial construction, causing developers to also prefer the traditional construction method (perhaps because of bad memories of industrial prefabricated construction in the 1950s). 20% blame traditional architectural design, which does not allow the use of industrial methods, and 23% said that the existing technologies in Israel are not good enough to make industrial construction a common standard.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on May 24, 2016

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2016

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