Investigating the Relationship between Reworks and Contractual Claims: The Salience of Contract Conditions

Abstract

Statistics show a high rate of contractual claims in construction projects, impacting the construction industry's progress negatively. 6 Rework is one of the main underlying factors that generate contractual claims. Rework and contractual claims follow a mutual routine. Despite 7 a large number of studies on the causes and impacts of rework on project performance, there has been limited research examining the relation-8 ship between claims and rework on the basis of contract documents. The paper first attempts to expose the sources of rework through a 9 systematic literature review and then assesses rework causes that fail to be addressed in construction contract documents. The review results 10 identified 37 root causes as the most common rework contributors to construction projects classified into five groups. The list of rework causes 11 served as a starting point for searching the contractual issues through a questionnaire survey. Accordingly, a relative importance index was used 12 for analysis of the primary data collected from the survey. The result first prioritized the importance level of rework causes in generating 13 contractual claims, preceding rework causes that are not addressed adequately through standard form of contract conditions in construction 14 projects. Findings of the investigations revealed that the general conditions of contract do not address the causes of rework adequately. There-15 fore, contract documents need improvement to cover contractual claims incidences due to rework. Lack of addressing rework causes in the 16 general conditions of contract triggers recommendations for revising the contract clauses that ultimately lead to improved claim handling and 17 dispute avoidances.

Rework causes classification model with liable parties of the contract in construction projects

“…As a result, the provided list is used to further investigate rework issues in the contracts by addressing rework causes in the contract terms and conditions. Addressing rework causes in the contract conditions results in fewer claims and disputes (Ndwandwa et al, 2017;Kim and Skibniewski, 2020;Asadi et al, 2022). Thus, the identified and classified rework causes in this study contributes to the body of knowledge in construction contracts.…”

“…Incorrect contract information is presumed to lead rework occurrence (Kakitahi et al, 2014). Searching the relationship between contract clauses and rework within various project stages would benefit future models of rework management by developing a framework that is capable to evaluate contracts in terms of identified rework causes (Mendis et al, 2015;Asadi et al, 2022). Identifying rework from a contract party's perspective will result in higher awareness of client and contractor by recognizing the root causes of rework at the time of contract preparation.…”

“…Grouping the similar rework root causes is necessary to understand the interdependency of causes and avoid duplications (Siraj and Robinson, 2019). The selected five categories in this paper are align with five group of rework causes in previous studies (Asadi et al, 2021a;Asadi et al, 2022). The category names in the proposed model were adjusted precisely to cover all identified categories in Table 1.…”

Mixed-method approach to the evaluation of rework provisions within general contract conditions

“…One of the common causes of contractual claims and disputes is related to rework (Palaneeswaran, Love and Kumaraswamy, 2008;Wang, et al, 2019). The risk of claims and disputes is an inherent part of the rework in construction projects (Asadi, Rotimi and Wilkinson, 2022). Rework has been regarded as an issue affecting contractual claims in construction projects.…”

“…According to ( Jelodar, Yiu and Wilkinson, 2016), rework, claims, and disputes arise from common sources. Even though most of the studies have identified the causes of rework and the causes of contractual claims separately, they have yet to examine or investigate the relationship between the rework, and the claims, and disputes (Asadi, Rotimi and Wilkinson, 2022). While many research studies have been conducted to understand the impacts of rework on project performance in the construction industry (Love and Edwards, 2004;Mahamid, 2016), very few have studied the effects of contractual claims originating from rework.…”