Recommendations for Minimising Construction Claims: Achieving Sustainable Relationships Among Stakeholders

Abstract

Claims and disputes are often unavoidable in the construction industry due to its unique and complex characteristics involving the massive investment of capital, lengthy project duration, and multiple project stakeholders. This chapter intends to identify the critical construction claims attributes, compare the perceptions of major stakeholders on different claim attributes, and investigate the contrast of the top five claim attributes between this study and previous ones. The literature review resulted in 48 claim attributes responsible for the construction project schedule delays. These attributes were then presented to Vietnam construction industry (VCI) practitioners in the form of a questionnaire survey. Data analysis was done based on the collected 113 qualified samples. Relative importance index (RII) was applied to determine the ranking of claim attributes. The results were that the top five causes of claims, that is, payment delays, mistakes by contractor during construction stage, delays in work progress by the contractor, financial failure of the contractor, and frequently changing requirements by the owner, lead to the schedule delays in VCI. These findings can assist the local industry practitioners and foreign companies seeking a share in the VCI market in understanding the causes of construction claims comprehensively and formulating the countermeasures to minimise their impacts and hence reduce the unnecessary losses and raise the likelihood of success as well as maintain sustainable relationships among stakeholders.

Citation

Sy, D.T., Aung, Z.M. and Viet, N.T. (2022), "Recommendations for Minimising Construction Claims: Achieving Sustainable Relationships Among Stakeholders", Din, M.F.M., Alias, N.E., Hussein, N. and Zaidi, N.S. (Ed.) Sustainability Management Strategies and Impact in Developing Countries (Community, Environment and Disaster Risk Management, Vol. 26), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 45-60. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2040-726220220000026005