Investigation of major disputes in construction of urban drinking water supply projects in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Currently drinking water supply has become very prominent subject in the country as it becoming rare as the human activities has been amplified. Consummate organization in Sri Lanka, which supplying the pipe born drinking water to the nation is National Water Supply and Drainage Board (NWSDB). It gears up plenty of projects every year, which covers the whole island. While some of projects are implementing in highly urbanized areas and others are assigning to the rural areas to cover low income settlements. Hence timely and successful completion of projects are more important than others. Disputes in the construction of water supply projects are deteriorate the successful completion while delaying projects. Urban water supply projects have high tendency of occurring disputes because of its nature. Hence this study is focused to investigate the disputes in construction of urban water supply projects in Sri Lanka. Accordingly, qualitative research methodology was adopted to have an in depth investigation on the subject. Carefully four projects were selected and semi structured interviews were conducted with the industry professionals who have been engaged in those specific projects. After analysing the findings of the interviews it was found that there are several disputes in selected cases. Failure to offer possession of site, change of legislation, frequent design changes, ambiguities in the contracts, scope changes and delay payments are the major disputes as identified. Investigation works further extended to find causes of such disputes and mainly causes of disputes divided in to three categories as behavioural, contractual and technical in nature. As the mitigation measures are more important for future projects, finally, this study identified the measures to be adopted in preventing and/or resolving construction conflicts.