Assessment of significant factors affecting the occurrence of variation orders in flood control construction projects

ABSTRACT: Variation order is a modification or alteration made that deviate from the written agreement between the contracting parties-owner, consultant, and contractor-affecting the proposed budget and the projects completion time. Due to numerous human and non-human variables involve in the construction, variation order occurs frequently. Commonly, researches focus on the study of the causes and effects of variation orders in construction industry, specifically road and building construction. Thus, this study focuses on determining the most prevalent factors causing the variation order in flood control construction project which is integral to flood prone countries including Philippines. The six factors causing variation orders, as determined using the Meta and Pareto Analyses, are ranked using the Analytic Hierarchy Process based on the perceptions of the owners, consultants, and contractors involved in flood control construction projects. According to owners, the factors are ranked as Environmental Factors, Financial Constraints, Design Related Challenges, Resource Management, Communication Breakdown, and Skill Shortage, respectively. Financial Constraints, Communication Breakdown, Design Related Challenges, Environmental Factors, Skill Shortage, and Resource Management are the top factors as per consultants. Based to the contractors, the factors are ranked in order: Communication Breakdown, Environmental Factors, Financial Constraints, Design Related Challenges, Resources Mismanagement, and Skill Shortage. Moreover, the conducted T-test reveals that there is no significant difference between the perceptions of these three parties. The contracting parties determine the estimated percentage gain or loss caused by such factors, and the results typically demonstrate that contractors benefit from these variation orders while owners and consultants lose.

Filipiniana