Change Management in Malaysia Infrastructure Project: Role of Subcontractors

Abstract

Implementation of change management is necessary for any construction projects especially infrastructure projects where government allocated billions of ringgit for the country development and the impact of change can be minimised if attended earlier. Nowadays, subcontractors were hired by the contractor to carry out the actual work as subcontracting is a very common practice in this industry. This research was initiated to identify the possible causes of change and then investigated the current status of change management implementation in Malaysia’s infrastructure project. A questionnaire survey was designed to collect data for this research. 102 out of 130 sets of questionnaires were collected from the targeted respondents. Then, a comprehensive analysis was conducted. It was discovered that “design change”, “addition/omission of scopes” and “ambiguities and mistakes in specifications and drawings” were ranked as top three factors contributing to change in Malaysia’ infrastructure projects. This research also discovered that the implementation status of change management was surprisingly high with 72.54% of the infrastructure projects implemented change management. Lastly, the subcontractors’ involvement in contractor’s change management process affected the project performance positively was confirmed in this research as the projects with subcontractor involvement had statistically significant better project performance in terms of time, cost and quality of work. The identification of the root cause for change in infrastructure project helps the future project practitioners to avoid such situation and more well-prepared for it. Subsequently, this research discovered the benefit of practising change management within the infrastructure projects and getting the subcontractor involvement statistically. The findings of this research could improve the project performance of Malaysia’s infrastructure projects.