Evaluating factors causing time and cost overruns in road projects in Roads department, Botswana

Abstract

Successful performance in a construction projects help to deliver a good product to the client. Poor time and cost performance on projects has become the key concern in Roads Department, Botswana. This is evidenced by records from some previous projects implemented between 1999 to 2013 which incurred time and cost overruns resulting in poor project delivery. This research has mainly been devoted to evaluating factors causing time and cost overruns in the execution of the projects. Secondary data was obtained from the literature review which provided the researcher with time and cost factors to use in evaluating the situation in Roads Departments, Botswana. A structured questionnaire was given to 38 officers (15 comprising top management and project managers, 17 project officers and 6 officers in the project team) from Project Implementing Unit; Their responses were evaluated to establish the extend in which the factors were occurring as well as their severity, the higher the occurrence, the more severe the factor. There were nineteen time factors and eleven cost factors identified, some from previous researches and some were brought up by the researcher. Non statistical analysis was used, which was the ranking of the factors on the frequency of their occurrence from respondents. Only those factors ranking 55% and above were found to be significant and severe. Statistical data analysis was applied using SPSS software package to determine the pattern of relationship on time and cost factors. Techniques used were Exploratory Factor Analysis through the factor extraction technique, The Kaiser- meyer-Olkin & the Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity technique, Regression Coefficient, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Pearson Correlation Coefficient. The findings depicted that six time factors and four cost factors were found significant and severe as they rated beyond 55%. It was again found out that there is a strong relationship between time and cost in achieving high or low project performance; four time factors were found most predictable to cost performance, while two cost factors were found most predictable factors to time performance. The mitigation measures have been given to ensure acceptable time and cost performance on project implementation. The study has given recommendations on the time and cost factors that were found severe and impacting projects negatively. These mitigations and the recommendations would assist the project team towards expected performance on output and delivery.