Contingency allocation and management for building projects

Ranasinghe, M (1994) Contingency allocation and management for building projects. Construction Management and Economics, 12(3), pp. 233-243. ISSN 01446193

Abstract

A theoretical approach is presented for contingency allocation and management in building projects using the quantification of uncertainty of project cost. The uncertainty of input items to a bill of quantities, namely, quantities of bill items, usage of resources and their prices are quantified as two moments. From these, two moments for project cost are evaluated. The cumulative distribution function for project cost approximated from its two moments is used to determine the contingency allocation based on a desired probability of success. The management process of this allocation is developed using an approach that establishes initial bench-marks by distributing the allocation to individual bill item costs. By using these initial bench-marks for further distribution, sophistication is introduced to the management process.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: contingency; probability; quantification; uncertainty
Index terms: bills of quantities, distribution function, quantification, project cost
Subjects: measurement and scaling, probability and distributions, financial and cost management, economics
Topics: Research Practice, Cost Management
Descriptive scope: 3 PCA

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