Investigation of project changes to mitigate disputes in Sri Lankan construction projects

Abstract

Disputes between parties in construction projects play a vital role in project performance. Mitigating disputes leads to high project performance and the achievement of desired outcomes for all parties involved with the project. Changes in the construction project environment can be identified as one of the main reasons to occur disputes between parties. Therefore, this research is aimed at mitigating disputes in construction projects through identifying most common change causes. Through the literature synthesis nature of the construction project changes and disputes and their effect on the construction project have been identified. Further, the importance of project changes for construction projects and strategies for mitigating the causes of changes are also identified through the literature synthesis. The research employed a mixed research approach entailing semi-structured interviews as the preliminary stage and a questionnaire survey in the later stage. Subsequently, manual content analysis was used to capture and map the major findings from the interviews and a relatively important index was used to rank the questionnaire survey findings. The results of the analysis identified the causes of changes which are mostly occurred within the project and also identified the causes of changes which are mostly lead to disputes. The client-related impacts have the most impact on the project disputes and external causes have less impact. Finally, strategies to mitigate change causes that lead to disputes were identified through the research. Accordingly, proper project planning, skilled labours, proper management, and collaboration among the construction project stakeholders are the feasible strategies to override the causes of disputes in construction projects.