Perceived Contributions of Professionals Towards Cost Overrun in Nigerian Construction Industry Quantity Surveyors Perspective

Abstract

A project is adjudged successful if it is completed to time, within the budgeted cost and meets client’s expectation. However, there is the global issue of construction cost and time overruns, which has contributed to poor project performance. Quantity surveyors have always been seen as the culprit in this regard, whereas, the Quantity surveyor is not solely involved in construction projects, there are other project team members who determine the path of the project success. Although there have been a lot of studies on factors affecting the cost of construction projects, there seems no consensus as what cost factors have direct influence on the cost of construction projects. Most construction projects experience cost overrun and it put massive financial burden on the client or owner. This study therefore aim to bridge the current knowledge gap by examining quantity surveyors’ perception of the factor leading to cost overrun in construction projects structure among the already established costing attributes identified based on literature review. Desk study along with questionnaire survey was used to identify the causes of cost overrun used to elicit responses from quantity surveyors working in Nigerian construction industry.  A total of 30 filled questionnaires were collected from clients, consultants’ quantity surveyors and contractors quantity surveyors. Importance of each cause was calculated on the basis of cumulative effect of occurrence and impact. Spearman rank order correlation analysis was used to evaluate whether consensus of opinions exists between groups of respondents. From the analysis of the results it was found that consensus of opinion exists between respondents on the causes of cost overrun. The results showed that, sole decision making by architect in high cost related designs without involving quantity surveyor, poor schedule cost management, high unit rate of materials, plants and labor inserted on the appendix of bill of quantities, poor knowledge and applications quantity surveyors billing and costing soft wares , poor design/ delay in providing design work to quantity surveyor for bill of quantities preparation, rework due to wrong work not been detected by quantity surveyor during interim valuations and project final account preparation, quantity surveyors accepting to work under pressure while billing, valuations and raising of payments certification, wrong estimation/ estimation method, and long period between design and time of bidding/tendering and collaborations with contractors and architects raising interim valuation orders and payment certificates without corresponding work on site and bill of quantities provisions are the major causes of cost overrun. The major causes as identified by this research were compared with the findings from other countries and there were fairly relevant similarities. Principal component analysis is conducted to extract the factor structure of the cost attributes and the attributes are grouped into three factor components, namely the contract procurement factor, the project cost management factor and the monetary value factor. Understanding these cost impact factors could be crucial in managing construction projects, since it allows the project stakeholders and quantity surveyors to take precautionary steps to identify the cost management problems and areas for improvement and could even help to avoid cost deviations in construction projects.