| Construction equipment is a major resource in the building process for a construction project. When equipment is owned by a contractor, it forms a sizable portion of his assets requiring proper management practices.;Although only one-third of the contractors has written equipment management policies updated periodically, all contractors practice almost similar equipment management procedures for selecting, acquiring, economic evaluation, operation and maintenance, record keeping, standardization, and safety. It was interesting to notice that contractors in Saudi Arabia follow procedures in managing equipment almost similar to those procedures followed by contractors in USA.;The objective of this thesis is to study the equipment management practices of major contractors in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, to present the most popular practices of the contractors and to compare the equipment management policies of contractors in Saudi Arabia with the management policies of contractors in USA. The needed data were collected via a structured questionnaire from 26 contractors out of the 70 contractors in the population. The contractors were divided into three grades based on their annual work volumes. The collected data were analyzed using the SAS software, producing statistics, frequency and cross tabulation charts. The elements of the management policies were cross-tabulated against the grades of contractors for finding possible significant differences in contractors' practices. Hypotheses on some expected results were tested. Finally, the findings of this study were compared with findings of similar conducted in USA for finding significant commonalties and differences in equipment management practices. |
