Factors Affecting Occurrence of Claims in Building Projects in Lagos State, Nigeria

Abstract

The occurrence of claims prevails in all projects, making the successful completion of projects within the predetermined budget a mirage. This is recognized to have added to costs of projects and adversely affected project performance. This paper aims at investigating critical factors influencing occurrence of claims in building projects in Lagos State, Nigeria. Forty-three (43) construction project attributes affecting project performance were identified through literature and presented to the key stakeholders in the study area using questionnaire survey. Two hundred and seventy-six (276) copies of the questionnaire were randomly administered to key stakeholders involved in the building construction process. One hundred and fifty-one (151) were retrieved representing 57.61% response rate. Principal component analysis of responses to a set of 43 characteristics identified through literature review extracted four components. The results indicated important factors such as: ‘Project Participant Characteristics’, ‘Basic Project Characteristic’, ‘Procurement Characteristics’, along with ‘Complexity Characteristics’ were factors influencing the occurrence of claims. It was concluded that the construction stakeholders should effectively manage these factors in minimising claims occurrence and thereby improving building projects delivery.

The common causes of rework in construction contracts: a diagnostic approach

“…When considering how rework causes under the group of human resources have evolved over the last two decades, inefficient skilled level of manpower, lack of experience and poor knowledge are highlighted more frequently. It is not surprising as low skill level (Forcada et al , 2014) and lack of experience (Ajayi, 2017) have been identified as highly ranked causes of rework in previous studies. Therefore, training is generally recommended to reduce rework through improving labour competencies (Yap et al , 2017).…”

“…The replacement of material by the client is one of the causes of rework with the highest frequency of occurrence (Hwang et al , 2014). Moreover, poor quality of material was ranked second in building projects (Ajayi, 2017), and third in the overall ranking of 43 identified causes in residential buildings (Mahamid, 2016). The other nine causes of rework under the general/external group also show various views ranging from financial issues, environmental conditions, external events and other similar terms.…”

“…Incomplete design and omission during the process of work is the second leading cause of rework in this study (mean 4.36). Similarly, incomplete design at the time of tender has been ranked under various situations in previous studies; as the most significant cause under design related group in the study of construction projects in Ukraine (Trach et al , 2019), third in the study for the benchmarking of rework mitigation in Australia (Love and Smith, 2003), fifth in the study of building components in Nigeria (Ajayi, 2017) and 11 in the study of residential buildings in Palestine (Mahamid, 2016). The third leading causes of rework in this study is poor project documents including contracts (mean 4.24).…”

“…The replacement of material by the client is one of the causes of rework with the highest frequency of occurrence . Moreover, poor quality of material was ranked second in building projects (Ajayi, 2017), and third in the overall ranking of 43 identified causes in residential buildings (Mahamid, 2016).…”