Risks Identification in Construction of Building Projects in Pakistan from Owners? and Contractors? Perspective

Abstract

Construction industry involves activities which are carried out by multitude of people with different skills and priorities and coordination of wide range of different yet interrelated activities. In addition to this a number of uncontrollable external factors also play their part to make the construction industry more multifaceted. These factors make the construction industry more risky amongst the all other industries. The major outcome of this research is to find the risk factors in construction of building projects from owners� and contractors� perspective and allocation of these risk factors to different stakeholders. The objectives of this study was achieved through a questionnaire having 32 risk factors identified from literature review and were distributed into 9 groups. The analysis of received responses of owners shows that risks of poor design by unskilled and inexperienced designer, injuries because of poor safety measures at construction site, design with discrepancies and poorly estimated quantities, are sever and high risks. The owners classified most of the risk as medium risks. The owners allocated most of the risks to contractors. Similarly from the responses of contractors it is concluded that risks like poor design by unskilled and inexperienced designer, design with discrepancies, injuries because of poor safety measures at construction site and financial failure of the contractor are very high risks. The contractors categorizedmost of the risk factors asmedium risk. The contractors allocated most of risks in the shared group category. The result indicated that most of the contractors and owners are unaware of the modern risk analysis techniques It is recommended from the outcome of this study that in order to avoid disputes amongst the stakeholders the contract documents should have clauses clearly mentioning allocation of different risks to various stakeholders in case of occurrence of that particular risk. Computerized historical data of successfully completed projects should be kept in order to use them in future for similar projects. Risks which are circumstantial and are beyond human control should be shared between the parties. The contractors and owners need to be educated on advanced risk analysis techniques and require proper training on these techniques.