Disputes and resolution mechanism of public-private partnership projects in Sri Lankan construction industry

Abstract

Sri Lanka is a developing country, which is experiencing of acceleration in the construction development at present, after 30 years of civil war. Construction industry is the fourth largest economic sector, which contributes in an important level to the country’s GDP. Nowadays Sri Lankan construction firms are on a trying to expand the business with new concepts of Public private partnership investment for government projects. But when consider about conflicts, claims and disputes within the projects, the occurrence is very frequent and the value of conflictive claims is higher when compared to the countries. Most of those destructive conflicts cause to inefficiency and losses to the final project in all the three terms of cost, quality and time. This directly effects to the enhancement of the construction sector. Many of those conflicts generate within the groups of construction parties. A Conflict can be solved at two particular stages of an ongoing project, either before arise the conflict by proper planning or through pre-designed mitigation means or after the arrival, through proper dispute resolution mechanism. This research used expert interview to identify the common conflictive and dispute situations arose in Public Private Partnership Construction project and suggestions were made to mechanisms for dispute resolution. Expert interview has been carried out by using different organization entities from government, private and public population to gather fair thoughts from all main parties. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the respective expert such as Project managers, Engineers, QSs, Investors and clients, whom involved with PPP projects. Base on the research findings, suggestions were decide to most practical dispute resolution mechanisms, such as recommendation of observed expert opining as separate mechanism or supportive mechanism or combined mechanism. It is expected that the findings will be useful for all professionals who lead PPP construction project, which are situated in Sri Lanka.