Construction

2 – Objectives of Construction Licenses’ Listing

This process aims at providing the following:

1. Data on the number of construction licenses and licensed areas in the Kingdom periodically (monthly, quarterly, annually).
2. Data on the occupancy purposes of the licensed buildings (residential, non-residential).
3. Data on the licenses by building type and governorate.
4. Periodic indicators to assist in evaluating the construction activity in the Kingdom.

  3 – Listing Coverage

This census is carried out monthly, where data on the new licenses issued by the authorities in charge of licensing (whether municipality or otherwise) are collected during the specified period.

4 – Sample Design

The Department of Statistics (DoS) collects data monthly on the new construction licenses issued by all municipalities and institutions in charge of licensing the buildings totaling (158) municipalities and licensing parties.

5 – Preparatory Stage

5 – 1:  Survey’s main documents

These documents include the survey questionnaires, instruction booklet for the field staff, office and electronic edit rules and the coding booklets. Find below a summary of these documents:

5 -1 – 1: The Construction Licenses Questionnaire: It includes the following data:

1. Area and type of construction use and ownership.
2. Construction site.
3. Identification data concerning location of the plot on which the construction will be built.

5 -1 – 2: The Construction Licenses Questionnaire: It includes the following data:

5 – 2: Survey’s main documents

This booklet includes definitions, concepts in use and instructions for field staff at supervisory and executive levels. It also includes detailed explanation of all the questions of the questionnaire and how to complete its data to ensure the highest possible accuracy. The booklet also includes the basic edit rules that the enumerators and edit staff must follow during questionnaires checking. It also includes the duties of the survey staff (supervisors, controllers, enumerators and edit staff).

5 – 3: Survey’s main documents

When designing the questionnaires, all the items contained therein must have predefined symbols. A special guide belonging to the Construction Statistics Division is also used for municipalities and licensing parties.

6 – Definitions and Classification of the Construction Licensing Listing

• Statistical Unit: It means the construction license issued by the municipality or the institution concerned.
• Status of the Construction to be licensed: The construction license is issued in three cases: to construct a new building or to construct an annex or an addition to an existing building or to license a building that has already been constructed without a license.
• Occupancy Type of the Building: Either it is a residential building (if more than half of its area is designated for housing purposes), or non-residential (if more than half of its area is for non-residential purposes) …the construction could be a wall.
• Ownership of the Building: It should be one of the following cases:

– Governmental: It is owned by the central government, public institutions or local authorities.

– Private: owned by individuals or enterprises of the private sector.

– Cooperative: Owned by various kinds of the cooperative societies.

– Other: Owned by other bodies such as foreign bodies, professional associations, religious communities and others.

• Predominant Construction Material of the Outer Walls: It is the main building material, which constitutes more than half the area of ​​the external walls of the building such as stone, brick or reinforced concrete. The finishing materials such as plaster, paint ….etc. are not considered as among these materials.

7- Organization of the Survey Staff

The staff consists of the Surveys Administration, which is entrusted with all administrative, technical and supervisory functions in addition to the office preparation staff consisting of edit and coding employees. AS for field staff, it consists of controllers, edit staff and enumerators. The Field staff works under supervision of the Field Supervisor.

7 – 1: Selection and Training of the Enumerators

The workers in these surveys are selected according to criteria related to the work nature, where emphasis is placed on the quality of workers in terms of educational level and specialization in order to accomplish the assigned task whenever possible. A training program is held for all surveys’ employees, including the definition of the surveys’ objectives, method of data collection and manner of dealing with the establishments. It also provides a detailed explanation of all questions in the questionnaire. At the end of the training, a written test is conducted to determine their comprehension levels of the concepts and instructions of the questionnaires.

8 – Contractors’ Data Collection Stage

8.1 – Organization of field work

Trained enumerators who are selected under supervision of the controllers carry out the field work. They are divided into teams consisting of two or three enumerators, a controller and an edit employee. The Field Supervisor supervises the field work.

8.2- Data Collection Method for the Licenses

Construction licenses’ data are collected from all the official licensing parties in the Kingdom, whether the municipalities, Greater Amman Municipality or the regional authorities or the Joint District Committees through a visit by the enumerators to these entities. They complete the questionnaires of the construction licenses’ listing from the records and licenses available to them on monthly basis. The present report contains the results of this census after its data were merged to represent the results at the general level.

8.3 – Field Edit

The field edit process was assigned to the field controller, who checked a sample of the questionnaires for each of his enumerators and alerted them to their mistakes (if any) to ensure that they are not repeated.

9. Data preparation stage

 9.1 – Office preparation

The completed questionnaires were fully checked by the office preparation staff after delivering them to the Construction Statistics Division. In case of any error in the questionnaires during the edit process, they used to be sent to the Division Head or his assistant for taking the appropriate decision. The error used to be rectified depending on its type, either by directly contacting the concerned person in the enterprise to verify correctness of the information or by returning the questionnaire to the field so that the enumerator would visit the enterprise again and rectify the error. Then the questionnaires would be coded before sending them to the Information Technology Directorate for data entry.

9.2 – Electronic preparation

After completing the edit and coding process of the questionnaire, they are sent to the Data Entry Division in the IT Directorate for being entered according to the pre-set entry program. The errors of the questionnaires or the data entry errors used to be immediately corrected during the data entry process through the automated edit software. The programmer produces lists of the preliminary results by using the pre-set rounding factors in order to edit and verify the validity of the results.

9.3 – Tabulation and dissemination of results

The final tables included in this report were extracted after checking the preliminary results and verifying their validity in terms of form and data consistency within the same table and with other tables. These results were also loaded on the web page of the Department of Statistics (DoS).