Abstract:
The construction industry is complex, widely varying and many factors
influencing its projects outcome. As construction projects become larger
and more complex, their management and challenges become more
complicated and core element for success. During the past few years, many
of the construction projects in West Bank went beyond timeline with extra
cost overruns, many obstacles faced the contracting process and generally,
the contracting career failed to take what it deserved of commensurate
development.
The objectives of this research are to study the construction contracting
sector in Palestine, highlight this sector problems and obstacles from the
perspective of local contract parties; project owners, consultants,
contractors and donor countries institutes. In addition to, investigate the
importance of these problems and observe identical situations in other
neighboring Arab countries, in order to investigate some proposed
solutions for improving the current sector situation.
In order to achieve this research objectives, set of interviews were held
with some contract parties to survey the problems they experience. Also, a questionnaire was performed to assess the importance degree of these
problems.
Results from the study showed that the problems related to the career
ethics are the most important problems that the Palestinian construction
sector suffers from. Also, results showed that the major construction
contracting problems are: Intense competition between contractors to the
extent of bidding at cost prices or by losses, policy adoption of
awarding the tender to the lowest evaluated bidder not to the most
accurate, owners' payments delay, currency exchange rate fluctuation,
owner deceleration in decision making, the number of available
contractors is high compared with the size of tendered projects, fluctuation
of construction materials prices due to inflation, current economic situation
deterioration, some contractors maneuvers by downloading some prices on
other items and conflicts between tender documents. Based on these
findings, proposed solutions were developed for solving and improving the
current state. Proposed solutions were presented in a framework to solve
and avoid the negative impact of such problems which might improve the
performance of construction sector in Palestine. Finally, recommendations
for the PNA, PCU and the other related contract parties were presented in
this research helping them in overcoming the current sector related
obstacles.