Causes of Cost Overrun in Federal Road Projects of Ethiopia in Case of Southern District
One of the problems has been broadly published in different literature related to construction project management is project cost overrun. To fill this gap, the study on causes of cost overrun was conducted. It was conducted on 18 road construction projects with eight case studies which is found under the southern district of Ethiopian Road Authority. Based on a comprehensive literature review and archives, 40 factors linked to project cost performance were acknowledged for analysis. Based on the percentage of maximum score rank of 40 identified factors, six top rated factors were identified. These are material price fluctuation, cost underestimation, delay in supply of raw materials, inadequate review of contract documents, lack of coordination at the design phase and lack of cost planning during pre and post contract stage have the highest impacts on the performance of project costs from the client's, consultants' and contractors' perspective. This study has been done through survey and case study to generate raw data. The questionnaires were distributed to 54 practitioners to evaluate the significance of the factors that causes the project cost overrun. In addition, case studies were used to find the magnitude of cost overrun on selected projects by an in depth analysis of an archive of each project. The magnitude of cost overrun among selected project extended from 4.16% to 83.2% While the average magnitude of cost overrun was nearly 21.52% this is a significant amount when it compared with the number of projects.