Feasibility of the delay and disruption protocol for claims management in Sri Lankan construction industry

Abstract

Delay and disruption claims are difficult to resolve due to issues in claims management in construction industry. Those issues are occurred due to wrong practices in the industry and having vague areas in delay and disruption. Although, there are some methods to diminish delay and disruption events, still there is no proper way to deal with those issues. Having a guideline for claims management is an effective mechanism. In that scenario, Society of construction law’s (SCL) delay and disruption protocol is the commonly used guideline in other countries and which have comprehensive scope. Hence, it is required to discover how far SCL protocol is appropriate to Sri Lankan construction industry. Therefore, the aim of this research is to investigate the feasibility of adopting SCL protocol for dealing with issues in delay and disruption in claims management in Sri Lankan construction industry. A comprehensive literature review, a questionnaire survey and semi structured interviews were done as the research method for this paper. Interviewees were selected from questionnaire survey. The findings of this study prove that having a guideline for claims management is important and awareness of SCL protocol in Sri Lanka is comparatively less. Further, it demonstrates that adopting SCL protocol to Sri Lankan construction industry is feasible. Management can achieve sustainable construction practices such as using human resource efficiently, willingness to work and effective time management. Finally, it confirmed that implementing SCL protocol will improve knowledge related claims management and it will enable to improve the claim practitioners’ practices.