Allocation of risks to parties involved in Sri Lankan road construction projects : a Delphi study.

Abstract

The findings of a broad literature review as the first stage of this study indicated that identifying risk factors on a lifecycle basis and defining the shares of the parties involved in projects in terms of dealing with risks would increase the effectiveness of risk management studies. Drawing upon the foregoing results, this study aimed at ascertaining the main risks and accordingly allocating them to the parties involved in each phase of the road construction projects in Sri Lanka deploying a three-round Delphi study. The outcomes of the Delphi revealed that the construction and the design phase are the most critical phases of a road project due to the prevalence of major risks in these phases. Besides, some critical risk factors occurring in more than one phase of the project life cycle were identified which necessitated the primacy of handling these risk factors as a prerequisite for success of road projects in Sri Lanka. The study concludes with presenting the potential sources of the identified risk factors and the stake of each party to handle the risks. The paper would contribute to the risk management literature in other countries explicitly developing countries facing the analogous challenges.