Assessment of Cost and Time of Errors in Construction Documents on Selected Building Projects in Nigeria

Abstract

The construction industry has generally been tagged with poor project performance. Cost and time overruns are the leading causes of poor performance. Design and construction errors are equally leading causes of cost and time overruns. The objectives of this study are to investigate the prevalent types of errors in construction documents, the cost implication of the errors, the time implication of the errors, and strategies adopted to mitigate the errors. The study involves an interview of construction professionals on 51 selected building projects across the southwestern States of Nigeria through the non-probabilistic convenience sampling technique. The findings of the study indicated that the Nigerian construction industry is largely dominated by the use of traditional procurement method and many construction projects lack complete construction documents. Also, errors in construction documents added about 9% to the contract sum and 31% to cost overrun. It also added about 21% to the agreed duration and 40% to the total time overrun. The study concluded that errors in construction documents affect project duration more than the project cost and can triple the agreed duration of building projects in some cases. The study recommended that based on the projects investigated, an additional 10% should be added to the agreed cost and 20% to the scheduled duration of building projects.