Abstract:
In the construction industry the contract time is the most determinant issue. In road projects
specially, the contract time is very crucial and needs proper estimation. The construction
contract (CC) should therefore carefully organize the duration of the project.
The Ethiopian construction projects are subjected to lack of well-planned CC duration. The
study attempted to assess the construction contract duration (CCD) of road projects in case
of Ethiopian road authority. The specific objectives of the study were to identify the current
practice of Ethiopian road authority (ERA) in CCD, to find out the major types of factors
affecting CCD in the authority, and to investigate the effect of social and environmental
issues related to CCD in the study area.
The design of the study has employed qualitative research method. The study area was road
projects in ERA-WR (ERA- West District) area and the sample was taken from managers and
experts in ERA, Ethiopian Road Research Center (RRC) in Addis Ababa, and other
contractor and consulting companies that are currently undertaking road projects with ERA
in the study area. The sampling technique used was non probability purposive sampling
technique to select the companies as well as the sample respondents in the respective
companies.
The primary data collection technique that used in this study was depth interview and
document consultation for mining additional data and for triangulation purpose was also
employed. The data has been analyzed by employing qualitative analysis approach, and that
involving some descriptive statistical computations and presentations for sorting out,
demonstrating and interpreting the results appropriately.
Hence, the practice of ERA to set construction contract duration is almost similar through all
the districts and determined by plan and program office without considering the engineering
value. Concerning the factors affecting CCD, there are many but the top five factors are
weather condition, terrain (topography) of the area, type of the project (road), poor site
management and type of soil. Furthermore these factors extremely affect the CCD of the
study area by extending the contract duration greater or equal to two folds of the planned
duration.
