Identifying the Critical Problems of Construction Contracting Management in Palestine

Abstract

The Palestinian construction sector is one of the key economic sectors and is the main force motivating the national economy. However, it is complex and affected by many constraints and obstacles that influence its outcomes. Therefore, this research was conducted with the aims to survey the construction contracting problems in Palestine from the different local contract stakeholders’ points of view; namely: contractors, owners, consultants and donor countries and institutions. 73 problems were collected and considered in this research and grouped in eleven main groups; namely, financial, political, administrative problems and problems related to the tender documents (contracts, drawings), specification and material adaptation (quality), contract parties themselves, sector environment, natural environment, arbitration and dispute solving, technology use and career ethics. A questionnaire was administered to evaluate the importance of the construction related problems. 310 questionnaires were distributed as follows: (183) contractors, (21) project owners, (92) project consultants and (14) donor countries and institutions. The results show that the highest ten important problems that Palestinian construction sector suffers from are as follows: rates’ burning due to intense competition between contractors, policy adoption of awarding the bid to the lowest price and not to the most accurate one, delaying owed payments by the owner, currency exchange changing value, owner deceleration in decision making, little size of projects in relation to the number of contractors, construction materials’ changing prices due to inflation, decline in the country’s economic situation, some contractors’ maneuvers by downloading some prices on other items and presence of conflicts between tender documents.