Project Delivery Methods used in Building Construction Projects of Pakistan

Abstract

In Pakistan, the traditional project delivery method used for building construction projects is “design-bid-build", especially in public sectors. Most of the projects following traditional project delivery method do not meet the desired project performance in terms of cost, time and quality. The projects performance can be improved by adopting non-traditional project delivery methods. This research study compares the cost and schedule performance of design-bid-build and design-build delivery method, using project data collected from 92 building construction projects of Pakistan. The results of the statistical analysis are presented in two major parts. First, the current procurement practices and delivery methods adopted in the selected construction projects are evaluated. Second, the performance of design-bid-build and design-build project delivery methods in terms of cost and schedule is compared. After statistical analysis of the collected data using SPSS, the results of the first part showed that the pre-qualification of contractor selection is being mostly used for the design-bid-build projects rather than design-build projects. Almost for the all design-bid-build projects contractors were selected through open competitive bidding, while for some design-build projects contractors were selected by negotiation. Single stage one envelope bidding procedure is the main open competitive bidding procedure used for most of the procurement. Single stage two envelope bidding procedure was used where the bids were to be evaluated on technical and financial grounds and price was taken into account after technical evaluation. The trend of using PEC conditions of contracts was found less as compared to FIDIC because former were reported to be biased in favour of owners/clients. Incentive clauses were not included for 74% of the total projects due to the absence of these clauses in FIDIC/PEC Conditions of Contract Very few disputes were reported in both types of project delivery methods thereby signifying that the project delivery method has no effect on raising of disputes. Engineer’s decision and amicable settlement both were almost equally used for dispute settlement. Key findings of univariate analysis showed that unit cost of design-bid-build project was 22% more than that of design-build projects. Very less significant differences were found in cost growth between design-bid-build and design-build project delivery methods. No significant difference was found from t-test analysis in unit cost, cost growth and construction speed between the two project delivery methods except schedule growth metric. This difference is more likely due to the fact that design build projects were executed by fast tracking and single point responsibility. Also, results indicated that the design-build projects had large construction speed, therefore, resulted in better schedule performance. It is concluded that the projects performance can be greatly improved by adoption of non-traditional project delivery methods. The present study was restricted to univariate analysis only. It is recommended that future studies may be carried out which include multivariate analysis.