Assessment of construction contract duration in road projects of Ethiopian road authority west district

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.