Extract

ABSTRACT: In recent decades attempts have been made to improve productivity in the Iranian
Construction Industry by importing foreign technology and by the industrialization of building production.
A research undertaken by these authors shows the efforts have largely failed. One of the reasons for
the failure is lack of an adequate earthquake resistance of the buildings constructed based on imported
technology. The research takes the premise that rather than introducing radically new methods of
construction which ignore the existing structure of the construction industry and construction skills,
improvements may be achieved by building upon this structure and the skills. What was we looking for,
as a secondary goal in the research, was a wider improvement of building productivity for the industry.
The Iranian Construction Industry, as in other developing countries, has both formal and informal
sectors. The formal sector is the more modern part of the Construction Industry and the informal is the
traditional industry (Mimarzia, 1995). There are also the private and public sectors. The public sector is
formal and the private sector of the Construction Industry is both formal and informal.
One of the assumptions underpin the research was that, neither traditional methods of construction nor
modern imported technology can meet building construction demands successfully. In other words, a
blend of the two is necessary. This assumption is supported by the observation that the use of modern
building materials applied using traditional method of construction has caused significant problems in
earthquake resistance.

This paper considers the nature of Iranian Construction Industry and its environmental conditions. It
discusses specific problems and their cause and effects focusing on critical problems to identify the
ways to improve building productivity of the industry

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