Abstract
Rural roads play an indispensable role in economic and social well-being, especially in developing countries, contributing to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. For this reason, it is necessary to plan these projects properly to guarantee their success. In this line, the objective of this research is to identify significant variables generating overruns in time and cost using empirical data of 535 rural road projects in Colombia from 2015 to 2018. Bivariate analysis, with statistical tools like Spearman’s Rho and Kruskal–Wallis, allowed identifying that higher values of variables like budget and project intensity are related to higher deviations in cost and time. Additionally, it was found that projects with shorter durations are reporting higher time overruns. The worst performers are projects executed in the year that council mayors start their terms, those developed in municipalities with more resources, and those awarded using a competitive bidding process. Multivariate analysis, through Random Forest, assessed the effect of considering all variables interacting simultaneously and ranking them in order of importance. The results demonstrated a relationship between cost and time performance, and that numerical variables are more significant than the categorical ones. This study contributes to a better understanding of the causes of delays and cost overruns on rural roads, providing useful insight for researchers and industry practitioners.
Highlights
IntroductionRural areas comprise vast geographical regions where a significant population faces emerging threats associated with a lack of infrastructure, across developing countries [1]
Rural areas comprise vast geographical regions where a significant population faces emerging threats associated with a lack of infrastructure, across developing countries [1]. Rural transport and their infrastructure play an indispensable role in the universal call of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which contribute to more than half of them
Rural roads correspond to 69% of the entire network in Colombia, with a total extension of 143,000 km
Summary
Rural areas comprise vast geographical regions where a significant population faces emerging threats associated with a lack of infrastructure, across developing countries [1]. Rural transport and their infrastructure play an indispensable role in the universal call of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which contribute to more than half of them. Rural roads provide regional connectivity, reducing poverty and facilitating access to essential services. These goals promote building quality, reliable, sustainable, and resilient infrastructure [2]. Rural roads correspond to 69% of the entire network in Colombia, with a total extension of 143,000 km. Deviations in time and cost are a global phenomenon on five continents and have not decreased over the past 70 years [7]
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