Structural Relationship of Causes and Effects of Construction Changes: Case of UAE Construction

Changes during construction is one of the critical issues faced in the construction industry. Effective management of construction changes will reduce the financial burden faced in construction projects due to cost overrun, and practitioners will be able to complete projects on time. On the other hand, construction changes exert severe effects on project performance. Hence, this paper uncovers several changes occurring in construction projects. It also evaluates the effect on various parameters of project performance due to changes. This was done by uncovering the underlying causes and effects of changes through the PLS method of structural equation modeling technique. SmartPLS software was used to develop and evaluate the study model based on 58 change causes and 48 change effects that were identified from the literature review. Causes of changes were categorized into three constructs which are client-related causes (CLE), consultant-related causes (COS), and contractor-related causes (CON). At the same time, the effects variables were grouped as Time Overrun (TO), Cost Overrun (CO), and Quality (QA). The survey data for generating the model was collected from 218 practitioners working on construction megaprojects of the UAE. Assessment on the constructed model found that the contractor (CON) group is the most influential group of causes with the highest values of the model's predictive explanatory power (accuracy), which is 0.396, 0.339, and 0.410 to time overrun, cost overrun, and quality assurance of the effects groups, respectively. At the same time, the Quality Assurance (QA) group is considered the most substantial parameter which are affected due to changes occurring in construction projects of UAE. This model is deemed beneficial for the UAE construction industry in facilitating the effective recognition of possible causes and effects of change among the UAE construction projects. As a result, the practitioners will make necessary arrangements to control the potential changes in future projects.