Abstract
Infrastructure plays a major role in the economic development of countries, especially in Asia which has experienced tremendous growth in recent years. The procurement of infrastructure continues to be characterized by cost overruns resulting in significant academic interest and theoretical propositions on the influential factors. This study contributes to this issue through adoption of pragmatic research methodology involving deterministic statistical analysis of real project data from reports as well as a qualitative analysis of these reports to unearth underlying issues from a thematic analysis. Furthermore, the study design takes a multi-country view towards establishing the role of contextual and geographical influences on cost overrun. An evaluation of 102 major infrastructure projects was performed covering railways, roadways and energy sectors in different regions in Asia. Findings reveal that differences in the propensity for cost overrun are mostly dependent on a type of infrastructure with rail projects being the most likely to overrun budget. Theoretically, propositions on the influence of project contextual factors are tested highlighting the influence of project size, project type, geographical locations, and the length of implementation period of a project as well as factors related to political, economic, strategic, and competence in infrastructure delivery which vary across countries.
Highlights
Infrastructure is essential for modern societies to enable the undisrupted flow of goods, energy, information, and people
Regression analysis is performed for projects in different Asian regions in order to determine whether there is a correlation between cost overrun and project size for a particular region
Considering the relation between cost overrun and implementation period for different geographical locations by performing regression analysis, the results have shown that there is no correlation for projects in Central Asia (F-test, F = 0.9055, p = 0.3532), and Southeast Asia (F-test, F = 0.2146, p = 0.6503)
Summary
Infrastructure is essential for modern societies to enable the undisrupted flow of goods, energy, information, and people. Many governments have invested huge amounts of capital in infrastructure projects and programs in order to contribute to socio-economic development and prosperity of their country. Large-scale, long duration, high investment and longitudinal site conditions, infrastructure projects are exposed to higher risks than traditional construction projects which could lead to cost overruns (Wang & Yuan, 2011). The current literature indicates that cost overruns have occurred in a significant number of infrastructure projects, such as Norwegian roadway projects (Odeck, 2004), road projects in the USA (Ellis, Pyeon, Herbsman, Minchin, & Molenaar, 2007), transport projects in Slovenia (Makovšek, Tominc, & Logožar, 2012), highway projects in Australia (Terrill & Danks, 2016), railway projects in Australia (Love, Zhou, Edwards, Irani, & Sing, 2017), and others. The results from research conducted by Flyvbjerg, Skamris Holm, and Buhl (2002), Flyvbjerg, Skamris Holm, and Buhl (2003a), Flyvbjerg, Bruzelius, and Rothengatter (2003b), Flyvbjerg, Skamris Holm, and Mand Buhl (2004), in which a large
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