THE CLIENT IN GENERAL AND THE CONSTRUCTION CLIENT

Clients are the reason that the industry exists; therefore, clients are always in the industry’s thoughts(Boyd and Chinyo, 2006 ).According to the Heran (2001) a client is someone who is freely choosing to avail themselves of a service. The existence of all service providers are decided by the behavior of the client. Today more than ever before, business is about fulfilling client satisfaction (Pries et al, 2004).Thus almost all the parties of the business environment are required to capture clients’ expectations and make a competitive output for the client.

Buildings are about changing and developing the client (Boyd and Chinyo, 2006). According to ( Seely, 1997 ) satisfied client is the object of all industries and is their best advertisement. The larger the financial outlay the greater is the difficulty to satisfy. Consequently the construction industry has possibly a higher proportion of critical clients than most industries. The client expects very high standards whether he purchasing a small house or investing in a multi-million investment. Further Seely(1997) described as client is often very disturbed by the amount of time it takes to acquire the suitable site, prepare designs and supporting documentation, obtain the necessary consents and finally secure completion of the project.


According to the Alkin and Flanagan (1995) the literature on construction clients views clients as the initiators of projects and those that contract with other parties for the supply of goods and services. At the end of the relationship, the client has the ownership of the outcomes, with legal jurisdiction of the economic advantages. Boyd and Chinyo(2006) argued that there are two problems for clients: expressing what they want and getting this delivered. However to start to understand clients all subordinate parties must avoid falling into discussing the construction activity and consider more ‘ what building means for the client’ , not its means of production or its physical realization. Therefore understanding of the clients and the clients’ role is critical for any kind of project.