ASSESSMENT OF CONTRACTORS’ PRACTICES TOWARDS RISKS OUT OF CONTRACTORS CONTROL IN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

Abstract

Research has shown that public construction projects in Saudi Arabia have exhibited poor performance for the past three decades. Recent studies have identified the ownership of parties who cause risks and lead to low performance in the Saudi construction industry. These studies identified that contractors are not the main party that cause risks as owners, consultants, and other parties have the major share of causing risks in the industry. The aim of this study is to assess the current risk management and performance measurement practices applied by contractors to minimize risk out of their control (caused by other parties) through conducting a questionnaire survey. The questionnaire survey was sent to contractors who work in public construction projects in Saudi Arabia. The assessment included the contractors’ practices in the identification of projects activities and risks, contractors’ practices in mitigating other parties’ activities and risks, and contractors’ practices in measuring the performance of all project parties. The study identified that contractors’ current risk management and performance measurement practices are not effective in minimizing projects risks caused by other parties and ineffective in measuring performance of all parties. The study recommends a proactive risk management approach that can help contractors to minimize risks caused by other parties and can measure the performance of all parties in projects.