Identification of critical dispute characteristics (CDCs) during construction project operations

Stakeholders in construction projects, owners, designers, and constructors, currently have limited means of managing disputes during a construction project execution once project operations begin. This research defines Critical Dispute Characteristics (CDCs). CDCs are project characteristics defined by retrospectively analyzing dispute cases in construction litigation that provide understanding of disputes and dispute potential. The CDCs are the basis for a framework and methodology that will allow the analysis of project performance from a dispute issue perspective. There is a need to develop new tools to assist stakeholders in monitoring construction project disputes. These tools must be able to proactively diagnose the potential for disputes in a project and prescribe possible preventive actions. As a foundation for the development of such tools, this research project: (1) defines a framework and methodology to analyze retrospectively dispute cases in construction litigation, as a profiling method for the characterization of dispute characteristics, and (2) establishes a fundamental set of CDCs. This research proves that most dispute cases in projects reveal specific, identifiable causes of disputes through their dispute characteristics. Therefore, potential disputes can be identified from the defined dispute characteristics that result from this research. Without a proper procedure for categorizing dispute characteristics into usable form, precedence knowledge cannot be utilized because there is no methodology to relate it to potential disputes. Through retrospective data analysis of dispute cases from federal appellate court cases, 14 CDCs are defined. The dispute cases are selected according to the presence of dispute keywords in the summary of a particular judgment statement. Additionally, dispute keywords are selected from the previously mentioned keywords in the literature review. Using content analysis methodology, the final set of 14 CDCs is defined by their frequency and context within a set of 80 keywords. The CDCs are defect, change, scope, cost, adjustment, bond, schedule, disputes, condition, undiscovered, definition, liability, warranty, and fraud. The importance of these 14 CDCs, and the relationships among them, are analyzed from various perspectives in construction operations.