Contractor’s Payment Delay and its Impact on Road Projects Administered under Ethiopian Roads Authority

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Date

2017-08

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Addis Ababa University

Abstract

Ethiopia has given special attention for development of the road sector. In this regard, the Ethiopian Roads Authority (ERA) has been given the responsibility to procure, regulate, and administer construction works and consultancy services. For ERA, to competently discharge these responsibility, it is essential that those members of ERA responsible for the project management to have a complete understanding of the Technical, Contractual and Financial aspects of the project. As part of these competence and capability, ERA is expected to have effective budget allocation and utilization system. However, ERA has usually faced difficulty in paying due payments on time to the Contractors and Consultants. As a result of this, the Contractor’s cash flow status have been affected, and, ultimately it results in delay in construction, quality related problems, late interest payment, increase in construction cost, and other cases of Contractor’s claim on a project. This research work, therefore, focuses on identifying the causes and impacts of delay in Contractor’s payment on road projects administered under ERA based on randomly selected six road projects in which late interest payment has been effected and questionnaire based survey with engineers from ERA, Contractor and Consultant and; subsequently, the detailed sources of the delay, potential impacts, and possible remedial measures were identified. Accordingly, it was found that ineffective budget allocation and utilization is the major cause for delay in Contractor’s payment and delay in progress of the physical works, reduced quality in construction works, increase in frequency of workmanship problems, insufficient resource arrangements, inability to comply Environmental, Health, Safety and Social Management requirements, and increase in construction and supervision cost of project were some of impacts of delay in Contractor’s Payment. To this respect, as a major outcome of the study, it has been arrived that maximizing the efficiency of design, the actual performance of the Contractors, information on past performance of Contractors and resource allocated on the project site and capacity of Professionals working at Planning and Program and Implementation directorate are very critical matters to plan and allocate sufficient fiscal year budget by the client so that occurrence of Contractor’s payment Delay.

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Road Projects

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