Malaysian construction industry (MCI) is regarded as one of the significant industry
that drives the country forward. Although having recorded 7.4% of positive growth in
2016, the progression of MCI was hampered by a considerable number of recurring
problems such as delays, wastages, cost overruns, and disputes. Consequently,
contractors’ faults are to be blamed, through their incompetent construction manager
(CM) to deliver construction projects. Even though there are provisions of education
and training for CM, continuous critiques on its ineffectiveness were reported.
Eventually, it was observed that lack of term of reference on the technical knowledge
competency for CM becomes the major setback. Therefore, the research aims to
establish generic technical knowledge competency model for CM through three
objectives that were outlined by the research, namely; (1) to identify the generic
technical knowledge competency of Malaysia’s construction managers, (2) to analyse
the importance of the generic technical knowledge competency of construction
managers towards categories and grades of Malaysia’s contractors, and (3) to analyse
the corroboration level of the existing CM education and training offered compared to
the generic technical knowledge competency. Pragmatic mixed methods research was
selected by employing qualitative and quantitative approaches. In short, multi-layered
thematic (MLT) analysis was embedded in literature analysis to maintain reliability,
before proceeded to validity as in semi-structured interviews towards related
academicians and practitioners in construction. Later, to analyse, validate and generalise
the findings to the masses, questionnaire surveys were distributed to contractors around
the peninsular of Malaysia. The findings from the critical quantitative analysis
identified that the construction manager requires vast numbers of generic technical
competency which further grouped into several levels. It is then simplified into sixteen
broad variables; (1) managing staff, (2) materials, (3) labour, (4) plants, (5)
subcontractors, (6) safety, (7) money, (8) quality, (9) time, (10) environment, (11)
administration, (12) pre-construction, (13) closeout and handover, (14) responsibility to
other parties, (15) computer literacy, and (16) administration of construction contract.
Additionally, all technical competencies are observed to be significant, notwithstanding
contractors’ categories and grades, except for Lean Construction. Last but not least, by
corroborating the technical competency for construction managers towards other related
competency documents, there is solid evidence that the former have substantial edges
among its counterparts. Finally, the identified technical competency for Malaysia’s
construction managers is believed to be exhaustive and holistic in singling out the
appropriate technical knowledge and skills, and bring about numerous advantage
towards technically competent Malaysia’s construction managers. The above
conclusion is also has been supported by the research’s final validation through open-ended interviews towards several distinguished individuals.