Investigating critical risk factors of selecting joint venture contractors for infrastructure projects implementation in Vietnam

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the major risks of joint venture contractor selection for infrastructure project implementation in Vietnam, and to explore the relationship between risk factors used for risk ranking and mitigation. From a literature review, together with expert group discussion, a list of potential risk factors was identified and used for questionnaire survey design. In this study, 100 survey responses were received from professional practitioners in Vietnam used to investigate their perceptions regarding the probability of risk occurrence and the severity of risk impacts on contractor joint venture selection. Factor analysis was performed based on a total of 32 main risk factors identified. Results reveal that seven main risk factors were extracted as follows: financial and economic risk, professional competence risk, joint venture organizational risk, joint venture legal risk, construction implementation collaboration risk, natural environment impact and pandemic risk, and construction site supervision risk. This study enables us to understand latent risk from a practitioner’s viewpoint. The findings of this study are beneficial for both the construction contractors involved in the joint venture form and the decision-makers who establish contractor selection strategies for complicated infrastructure projects in the context of developing countries.