Factors affecting the determination of duration of road construction projects in Ghana
Loading...
Date
2005-11-03
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Road construction is capital intensive and therefore requires adequate planning and programming to execute economically. As money has time value, it is necessary to estimate all road project durations realistically to avoid project cost overruns.
For the above reason, studies have identified some sixty-seven factors that do affect the duration of road construction projects in one way or the other. Realistic project duration determination entails the consideration of these factors, and in Ghana both consultants and contractors are found not to consider them thereby causing project time overruns, with the attendant cost overruns.
This study therefore sought to identify those of the time-influencing factors that would be relevant to the Ghanaian situation and prioritize them for use in a future research to develop a realistic tool for determining duration of road construction projects.
The study comprised a questionnaire survey among classes Al and A2 contractors in Ghana as well as staff engineers and quantity surveyors of all the three government road agencies under the Ministry of Roads and Transport in all the ten regions of the country and also private road sector consultants. This was done with the aim of identifying the importance contractors and consultants attached to the factors that affect the duration of road projects in the country.
The study revealed thirty-nine time-influencing factors that contractors and consultants considered to be relevant for determining durations of road construction projects in Ghana.
It also revealed that 66.7% of consultants and 73.5% of contractors in Ghana rely on their past experience on the job anytime they are determining the duration of road projects in Ghana, instead of on any scientific method.
Based on the above findings, therefore, the study made several recommendations that would encourage the stakeholders to apply scientific measures in determining road project durations. Also, it recommends that the selected 39 time-influencing factors be seriously considered when road projects durations are being determined, and also that they could be used, in a future research, to develop a model that could estimate realistic road project durations in Ghana.
Description
A project report presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a degree of Master of Science in Construction Management.
Keywords
Time-influencing factors, Capital intensive, Road construction, Ghana