Disputes in Construction Projects: A Perspective of Project Characteristics
Publication: Journal of Legal Affairs and Dispute Resolution in Engineering and Construction
Volume 14, Issue 2
Abstract
Over the decades, the construction industry has been experiencing disputes in different project contexts. For example, disputes are more prevalent in traditionally procured projects and in projects with a complex nature of design. Further, certain large-scale government projects have had disputes due to budget and payment issues. Disputes adversely affect the project budget, the schedule, and the quality, thereby affecting the project performance at large. Therefore, this study examines the causes of disputes from the perspective of project characteristics. Following a review of causes of disputes, a total of 44 building projects were surveyed, and the required data were collected by referring to relevant project documents and through semistructured interviewes among project participants. The results revealed that payment delays, ambiguities in documents, and scope changes are a few of the critical causes that can be attributed to the type of client, cost and size of projects, degree of design complexity, procurement method, and source of funding. Therefore, this study recommends that, as a matter of importance, the potential causes of disputes should be addressed as per the project contexts at an early stage in order to avoid the disputes, and to mitigate the resultant effects in the construction industry.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, and code generated or used during the study appear in the published article.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Legal Affairs and Dispute Resolution in Engineering and Construction
Volume 14 • Issue 2 • May 2022
Copyright
© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: May 22, 2021
Accepted: Nov 17, 2021
Published online: Feb 14, 2022
Published in print: May 1, 2022
Discussion open until: Jul 14, 2022
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