The development of a procurement decision support system to enhance construction claims management practice

Delays resulting from claims are a major source of disputes in construction projects. There are different classifications of claims. However, inherent in any claim is a quest for additional resources – material, time and/or cost. Construction contract claims increasingly constitute significant delays and are often accompanied by additional cost. Existing literature shows that 70% of Nigerian projects suffered delay set-backs in their execution and reveals an average cost over-run of 17.34%. This research investigated the main factors affecting the management of claims in the Nigerian construction industry and results obtained revealed that corruption, lack of claims management experts and procurement strategy, respectively, are the main factors affecting the management of claims in the Nigerian construction industry. Given that corruption is a socio-cultural issue and insufficient claim managers is a human resource issue, the research found procurement strategy adopted in each project case to be the main operational issue affecting claims management in the industry. Consequently, the research developed a decision support system for selecting procurement strategy in order to enhance current industry practice. The passive implementation of the most convenient rather than the most suitable procurement strategy has led to the misfortune of so many projects in the Nigerian construction industry. The aftermath of this has been numerous contractual claims during project execution resulting in cost over-run, time over-run and poor project delivery. In extreme cases, where claims are left unresolved, it has led to arbitration, mediation, litigation and in some cases outright project abandonment. Pragmatic research paradigm was adopted for the study. This research also employed a mixed research methodology, with both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection for data analysis. The use of structured questionnaires and multiple case studies were also adopted in eliciting knowledge from industry practitioners using a snow-balling technique. An inductive and deductive approach was adopted in developing a strategic procurement decision support system capable of bridging existing knowledge gap(s) among industry practitioners. A total of 66 valid responses were collected through administering structured questionnaires to industry practitioners in two (2) separate surveys and 31 project case studies were further analysed. This research contributes to the body of knowledge in construction management by exploring the key factors affecting the management of claims and developing a strategic procurement decision support system to enhance the successful delivery of construction projects. It is an academic work that provides greater insight as to the problems affecting claims management.