Open Access Overcoming Obstacles Facing the Contractors Sector in Saudi Arabia Using a Rank Correlation Method

Abstract: The contractors sector is considered to be one of the most important sectors in terms of its effects on economic development, stabilization, and urbanization. The main objective of this study was to explore and analyze the obstacles facing the contractors sector in Saudi Arabia from the contractors ’ point of view using Spearman’s rank correlation method, where the dimensionality of ordinal data was reduced by factor analysis. This required a comprehensive investi-gation of the obstacles that prevented contractors from completing their jobs on time, or that led to them completing a lower quality job and losing money. This study only included Saudi contractors involved with building activities and it was based on data collection using comprehensive questionnaires that defined five main factors: managerial, financial, expansion, environmental and technical. Contractors who were qualified and registered by the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs (MOMRA) were considered in this study. The study concentrated on the building sector, specifically the fields and activities defined by MOMRA. Identifying the obstacles that affect professional and technical activities should help to improve performance and address various problems. A digital interactive structural questionnaire was designed and distributed via the internet to collect responses from the participants where a Likert scale-based method was used. The results obtained using the questionnaires are presented as tables and figures