Abstract
Concrete patch repair is becoming an very important facet of the civil construction
industry when considering the very large quantity of exposed concrete surfaces requiring
maintenance and rehabilitation during its design life cycle. Patch repairs are more often than not
done with a specialized polymer-modified mortar which requires adequate quality control and
quality assurance during application and curing to ensure long-term success. Unfortunately, there
have been many patch repair projects where there has been poor performance of the patch repairs
resulting in . Ddebonding, cracking and discolouration. are evidence of such poor performance. In
this paper, poor or inadequate quality control during the patch repair process is investigated as one
of the possible reasons for this poor performance and premature failure . It is postulated that
because of the lack of adequate knowledge and understanding of the repair material and the repair
process by the various stakeholders (applicator, supplier, consultant and client), deficiencies in the
quality control and quality assurance before, during and after the repair project often exists. In many
patch repair projects, the responsibility for the successful completion of the patch repair work and
the assessment of long term performance of patch repairs is not fully embraced by all of the parties
involved.
This postulation has led to the research, by using questionnaires designed specifically for the four
different stakeholder categories of the concrete repair industry. The results indicate that there is
very little discussion amongst the stakeholders regarding quality control and acceptance criteria
when performing concrete patch repairs, neither for the identification of patch repair failure directly
after the completion of the patch repair, nor for long term performance of the patch repairs.