Causes and preventive strategies of scope creep for building construction projects in democratic republic of Congo and Rwanda

Scope creep is the uncontrolled changes to scope that are difficult to be known and contribute to time and cost escalations during construction phase. Thus, preventing its causes would be an efficient strategy to improve performance of the construction projects. This research set out to highlight, ascertain and rank the critical causes of scope creep with respect to their level of occurrence and to their influence on cost and time increase for the building construction projects in the Sub-Saharan countries of D.R.Congo and Rwanda. Subsequently, preventive strategies were also provided. A questionnaire survey was conducted among consultants, contractors and clients, and a total of 141 questionnaires were collected from both countries. The survey results analysed by the mean of t-test technique showed that there is a significant difference in the likelihood of occurrence and in the level of influence on cost and time overruns for majority of the 37 causes resulting to scope creep between the two countries. Also, there is significant difference in the importance level of majority of the eleven best practices in preventing scope creep. This study grants a vital contribution to control scope creep in D.R.Congo and Rwanda, and in the countries with the same condition.