Afetornu, C; Edum-Fotwe, F T and McCaffer, R (2006) Estimating budget variability for road projects. In: Boyd, D (ed.) Proceedings of 22nd Annual ARCOM Conference, 4-6 September 2006, Birmingham, UK.
Abstract
The use of contingency in construction provides a tacit acknowledgement of the perennial problem of cost overruns in the delivery of projects. The effects of these cost overruns are adverse consequences such as projects becoming non-viable or in extreme cases being abandoned. The immediate as well as other stakeholders associated with the project suffer the socio-economic impact of this adverse consequence. To some extent the cost overruns can be deemed as being symptomatic of inadequate planning and budgeting of projects that in turn is a consequence of accuracy of costing data employed for estimating project budgets. The analysis involved in the investigation would help to characterise the scale of escalation on construction projects. The projects would be drawn from the road sub-sector of construction. Understanding the nature and factors that account for the overruns should assist in establishing more accurate project costs. The aim of the study is to explore the nature and scale of project cost overrun in construction to provide information for planning future projects. The study will utilise project data from road schemes to establish the magnitude of the cost overrun.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | budgets; construction; contingency; projects; roads |
| Index terms: | costing, overrun, socio-economic impact, variability, investigation, project cost, budgeting, project data, construction project, estimating, road project, becoming, accuracy, cost overrun |
| Subjects: | philosophical process, accounting and finance, economic and policy analysis, project controls, infrastructure engineering, professional development, financial and cost management, data collection methods, economics, production management, financial management, statistical analysis |
| Topics: | Research Practice, Information Management, Engineering Principles, Business Strategy, Project Management, Cost Management, Time Control |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here