Extension Of Time Claim Management System In Ethiopian Construction Building Projects. A Case Study On Construction Firms In Addis Ababa

Abstract

Construction project is a mission, undertaken to create a unique facility, product or service within the specified scope, quality, time, and cost. In Ethiopian economy, as demonstrated by the GDP, construction share an averaged at about 5.2 percent in the period 2002/03- 2006/07. Over this period, there has been increased investment on the development and expansion of various infrastructure projects like roads, airports and residential and non residential housing units. The complexity of the construction industry due to different stakeholders’ involvement gives rise mostly to unwanted situation like delay and time Extension. Past researches shows that delays in Ethiopia encountered in most of the projects range between 110% and 467% of the original contract time. Therefore, the objective of this study is to evaluate management of EOT claims, analyze different EOT evaluating techniques and to forward the most applicable time extension delay analysis techniques. Data was collected using distributed questionnaire and the processing, analysis and presentation of data were done through descriptive statistics analysis i.e. frequency distribution method (Tabular presentation followed by discussions was mainly used). Analysis of the data contain determining the causes of delay and EOT claim in, the percent delay and the most applicable delay analysis techniques in construction building projects. The findings shows that design problem, late approval of payment, owner’s interference, variation work order, shortage of resource, incomplete and infeasible time schedule analysis, management problem, shortage of budget and late approval of payment were the most important delay factor. Maximum extension of time of construction was ranging from 20 to 50 %. As per result of this research analysis, as-planned vs. as-built was found the most used methods of delay analysis techniques. Availability of information on time of analysis was found hindsight delay analysis techniques as major and foresight delay analysis techniques in same extent. Based on the analysis of this study, the major type of delay that happens mostly in the construction organization was found as excusable delay, concurrent delay, compensable delay and non compensable delay which ranked 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th respectively. Furthermore, as the study finding shows, the construction firms mainly use as-planned vs. as-built (56%) and as-planned as evaluating techniques of analysis for their claim of extension of time (EOT). Hence, due to existence of numerous concurrent delays throughout this project finding, the analysis method that recommended in this study for both owner and contractor delays is as planned vs. as-built in which it would be able to better show or clear picture of the concurrencies. Furthermore, future researches must be done in this area to improve the construction industries in Ethiopia.