Abujnah, M S (2010) Towards a risk management framework for Libyan house-building projects. PhD thesis, University of Salford, UK.
Abstract
Time and cost overrun problems are commonplace throughout the world in the construction industry. Libyan House-Building Projects (LHBP) experience the same dilemma and often to a greater extent. This is attributed to both unexpected and expected factors in which risk and uncertainty were not effectively dealt with. A focus on risk management is therefore necessary to improve the current project's poor performance. The purpose of this study is to provide a Libyan Risk Management Framework (LRMF) to improve the performance of the construction project management process in LHBP through investigating and analysing time and cost overrun causes. In addition, establishing a comprehensive risk response to eliminate or mitigate the major threats in these types of projects. The proposed framework will be developed to critically reflect a synthesis of the international risk management frameworks, the available literature regarding time and cost overrun factors, and expert's professional knowledge and expertise of working in the Libyan Construction Industry (LCI). The developed framework begins with risk identification which, in this particular work, was based on two means, namely: the review of previous published studies that are concerned with time and cost overrun in the construction industry; and semi-structured interviews and discussions with construction professionals. The main objective of this phase of research (first phase) was to gather a list of risk factors that could be responsible for time and cost overrun in LHBP. This list was further filtered, validated, and assessed through group discussion session conducted with a number of Libyan experts which represented the second phase of research. Based on the information obtained from the two earlier phases, a structured interview template was drawn up. This constituted the third phase of the study (i. e., the survey phase). Hence, a survey targeting construction professionals which comprises: local contractors; government officials; consultants; and international companies was carried out. A Kruskal-Wallis test has been used to test the variance in responses. The outcomes of this test revealed that, there is a consensus among the four construction-related groups with regard to assessing risk likelihood and risk consequences for the majority of the identified risk factors A statistical analysis has been employed to test the strength of relationship between the results of group experts and the findings of each individual group. Based on the results of Pearson's rank correlation test, it was concluded that there are strong associations between different groups on ranking the identified risk factors. The research outcomes concluded that delays in progress payments causing cash flow problems to the contractor; shortage of skilled labour; unqualified decision makers; and slowness of the owner's decision making process causes suspension of work were identified as the most important risk factors leading to construction delay and cost overrun in LHBP. Therefore, risk responses, in the form of recommendations to relevant parties, have been suggested to eliminate or mitigate these major threats.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | decision making; government; housebuilding; interview; Libya; payment; project management; risk identification; risk management; statistical analysis; uncertainty |
| Index terms: | risk response, risk identification, survey, cash flow, interview, skilled labour, local contractor, Libya, decision-making, construction delay, cost overrun, decision-making process, owner, professional knowledge, statistical analysis, variance, construction industry, housebuilding, project management, construction professional, construction project management, risk management, risk factor |
| Subjects: | construction integration, financial management, management, professional development, project management theory and practice, financial risk, Geography, sociology, measurement and scaling, decision analysis, project controls, environmental hazards, industry analysis, data collection methods, risk assessment, practitioner, financial and cost management, data science |
| Topics: | Human Resources, Time Control, Research Practice, Information Management, Business Strategy, Cost Management, Stakeholder Management, Roles and Professions, Geographical Context, Project Management, Sustainability, Risk Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 5 PCTEA |
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