In March 1999, the Korean government identified a ‘rough-and-ready’ approach to project management as a cause of completion delays in public construction projects, and announced that the related social and economic loss accounted for 15.4% of the ...
In March 1999, the Korean government identified a ‘rough-and-ready’ approach to project management as a cause of completion delays in public construction projects, and announced that the related social and economic loss accounted for 15.4% of the total project cost arising from
the delay in construction period. Although diverse measures to deal with delay-related problems have been presented for the last 10 years, the issue of completion delays in public construction projects has not
been addressed. The underlying institutional problems related to the calculation of and claiming for the additional cost of a delayed construction period have not been resolved. Nevertheless, there have been insufficient studies conducted on the calculation of and claiming
for the additional cost of a delayed construction period, and the practical and quantitative improvements that are required.
This study presents five quantitative alternatives to calculate
additional cost for a delayed construction period based on an analysis of the current problems in cost calculation and survey after reviewing the previous studies and the institutional system to calculate additional cost for a delayed construction period. A survey of 213 technicians and experts in the construction field was conducted. Of the respondents, 73% agreed with a rate system similar to the penalty for delay as the additional cost calculation for a delayed construction period for the reason of convenience and ease of claiming the additional cost. The five alternatives presented in this study include a preset compensation rate for the loss per day including additional cost for delayed construction period, the number of days delayed from the completion date, and various composite methods.
The five alternatives presented in this study were applied to the 14 additional cost claim cases for the 1st Step of Seoul Metropolitan Subway Line No. 9 to confirm their validity. From the verification of the alternatives using the pilot data of the 14 additional cost claim cases, the 1st alternative, which used the appropriate compensation rate
for the loss per day, was shown to be between 0.0053% and 0.0066% within ±95% confidence intervals of T-verification, and the 3rd alternative, which used the data and time function method that calculates a cost similar to that by the currently used criteria for an actual cost calculation, were identified as being relatively valid.
This study aims to present a more practically and quantitatively improved method for the additional cost calculation arising from a construction delay based on the verification results for the five alternatives, survey and problems found in the method currently used
for additional cost calculation.
First, unlike change in order or escalation there are realistic
restrictions on the application of the firm-fixed-price contract to the current additional cost calculation method for a delay in construction period. It is desirable to give reasonable choices to contractors by diversifying the additional cost calculation methods related to delay in
construction period, as is done for change order and escalation.
Second, it is necessary to introduce the compensation rate for the loss per day systematically as a quantitative method to calculate additional cost, as was found in the verification using 14 pilot data,
and it is reasonable to set the compensation rate as 0.0053%~0.0066% per day for the number of days delayed.
Third, the date and time function should be added to the
compensation rate for loss per day. Using this method, the additional cost is calculated by multiplying each item on the price bill of quantities by the number of days delayed.
As the additional cost calculation methods for delay in construction period are diversified, claims by contractors are increasing, while the government organization or agency becomes more strict in its requirements for granting a time extension, which may lead to further
controversies over the reasons for a delay in construction period. The core of such controversies lies in strict process management, which would serve to improve the overall process management of the public construction projects. However, this study has a limitation in that the
only claim cases were for a subway construction project, and further studies on other project types should be done to address this restriction.