Public work contract laws on project delivery systems and their nexus with project efficiency: evidence from Ethiopia

Abstract

Time, money, and quality are the three basic criteria for measuring construction project efficiency. The Ethiopian construction sector in general and public work projects, in particular, are believed to suffer from inefficiencies despite their quantitative growth in recent years. Previous researches have made attempts to explore factors determining the efficiency of the sector such as the low capacity of contractors (both financial and equipment, shortage of skilled human resource on technical, managerial, and entrepreneurial skills, etc…), the poor performances of the supply chain, inflation in the economy and so on. However, process and system-based challenges of the sector resulting from the existing legal frameworks governing the sector such as the modes of delivery of projects (modes of contracting) have not been a subject of extensive study. In this study, doctrinal and nondoctrinal legal research methods are employed to explore project delivery system(s) recognized in Ethiopia's public work contract laws and appraise their efficiency in terms of ensuring prompt completion of public construction projects. The doctrinal aspect of the research exposed that, despite an implied recognition of Design-Build (DB) and its variant forms of project delivery system, the country's public work contract laws set up Design-Bid-Build (DBB) as a default mode of contracting. Besides, the result from a survey questionnaire of 158 respondents which was computed by using Research Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) to generate the Relative Importance Index (RII) of each mode of contracting corroborated by primary data derived from the completion and status report of 40 road and 9 building projects, shows that even though construction project time overrun (delay) often happens in both routes of contracting, the magnitude of such inefficiency is greater in public projects of DBB than DB delivery mode.

Enhancing performance measurement of public procurement processes through the application of procurement delay index

“…Time is widely used as a performance measure for projects [ 31 ] thus the use of terms such as process cycle time, lead time, and on-time delivery. Time wasted can never be regained hence the need to closely monitor time spent on processes in businesses.…”

Archives of Civil Engineering

“…For instance, the cumulative reading of Article 3244 (1) "a contract of public work is a contract whereby a contractor binds himself in favor of an administrative authority to undertake a public work which constitutes all works associated with the construction, reconstruction, upgrading demolition, repair or renovation of a building, road, or structure, as well as services incidental to works if the value of those services does not exceed that of the works themselves and includes buildown-operate, build-own-operate-transfer, and build-operate-transfer contracts" [17]. It is possible to understand from the cumulative reading of the above two legal provisions that public work contracts in Ethiopia only constitute the work aspect of the contract leaving out the service aspect of the contract (which refers to design) to a separate contract of intellectual service regulated under Articles 2632 and the following of the Civil Code [6].…”

“…Therefore, construction project contracting modes define the structure of the relationships of the parties, the roles and responsibilities of the parties, and the general sequence of activities required to deliver the project [5]. Based on the preceding definition, it is possible to figure out that a construction project contracting is "contractual form of working relationship that defines the roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders involved in a construction project from the time of planning up to completion" [6]. Construction project delivery systems may take any of the following forms; Design-Bid-Build (DBB); Design-Build (DB); Construction Management (CM); Design-Build-Operate (DBO); Design-Build-Operate-Maintain (DBOM); Design-Build-Finance-Operate (DBFO); Build-Own-Operate (BOO); and Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) and so on.…”

“…Construction project delivery systems may take any of the following forms; Design-Bid-Build (DBB); Design-Build (DB); Construction Management (CM); Design-Build-Operate (DBO); Design-Build-Operate-Maintain (DBOM); Design-Build-Finance-Operate (DBFO); Build-Own-Operate (BOO); and Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) and so on. Out of the above-listed modes of contracting, DBB and DB are widely used in public work contracts in Ethiopia [6].…”

How to alter path dependency and promote the use of EPC model in public projects of China?

“…The EPC model has been used in public construction projects invested by the government in more and more countries, and has achieved good performance [ 1 ]. In the past two decades, the use of EPC model instead of DBB model which in the order of "design, bid, then build" in public projects has become the main practice in developed countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union [ 2 – 5 ]. At present, the Chinese government is actively promoting the project general contracting mode, and takes it as one of the key tasks of China’s construction industry reform.…”