Investigating the Relationship between Reworks and Contractual Claims: The Salience of Contract Conditions

Abstract

Statistics show a high rate of contractual claims in construction projects, impacting the construction industry’s progress negatively. Rework is one of the main underlying factors that generate contractual claims. Rework and contractual claims follow a mutual routine. Despite a large number of studies on the causes and impacts of rework on project performance, there has been limited research examining the relationship between claims and rework on the basis of contract documents. The paper first attempts to expose the sources of rework through a systematic literature review and then assesses rework causes that fail to be addressed in construction contract documents. The review results identified 37 root causes as the most common rework contributors to construction projects classified into five groups. The list of rework causes served as a starting point for searching the contractual issues through a questionnaire survey. Accordingly, a relative importance index was used for analysis of the primary data collected from the survey. The result first prioritized the importance level of rework causes in generating contractual claims, preceding rework causes that are not addressed adequately through standard form of contract conditions in construction projects. Findings of the investigations revealed that the general conditions of contract do not address the causes of rework adequately. Therefore, contract documents need improvement to cover contractual claims incidences due to rework. Lack of addressing rework causes in the general conditions of contract triggers recommendations for revising the contract clauses that ultimately lead to improved claim handling and dispute avoidances.