Organizational and Regional Perceptions on Risk Status of Change Orders, Shop Drawing Practices and Claims and, Key Control Measures in Construction Projects

One of the most common concerns in construction projects is changes in the construction execution process. Projects in the Turkish construction industry have exposure to many changes depending on many factors. Many variables affect construction projects during execution. There are various contract clause components that can contribute to changes in construction projects. In particular, shop drawing practices have an important effect on the change of contract drawings. On the other side, changes may allow contractors to claim additional price and duration. Any organizations involved in the project may have to meet the monetary value of the claim. The projects may be completed with failures because of claims and every part is in seeking to express their self-righteousness in such cases; conflict may arise between parties involved in projects. The reasons for the changes and claims may differ depending on the project parties, the project region, and the project characteristic. This research aims to examine the key events contributing to contract clauses named change orders, shop drawing practices, claims, and key control measures, based on a survey of construction professionals in the organizations and seeks to develop and propose the regional framework for Turkish construction industry which assists to construction organizations to control the problematic events encountered in construction projects. In this context, a variety of events leading to change were examined based on the perceptions of the organizations in Turkey, North Cyprus, Turkey, as well as in the U.S.A. On the other hand, a variety of events leading to shop drawing practices, and claims events and, in the final phase, a variety of potential measures that can be taken to prevent claims were examined based on the perceptions of the organizations in Turkey. The interaction status of key events of these contract clause components were examined in the perceptions of organizational characteristics. The events of change orders are also examined on the basis of developed and developing country characteristics. Descriptive method is used to analyse the survey data in numerical terms based on participants‘ replies. After that, analytical research approaches were adopted to explore the impact of organizational and regional characteristics concerning key events of these contract clauses. The research findings showed that the critical events of contract clauses and control measures differed by the characteristic and regional features. A total of 12 different (variable) most critical events are identified on the basis of variety of organizational perceptions. 3 of these events were for "change order", 5 of them were for "shop drawings" and 4 variable "contractors' claims" were determined. On the other hand, 5 variable control measures are identified with respect to organizational perceptions. According to the perceptions of the organizations, a framework model has been presented to indicate the critical triggering events of these contract clauses and effective control measures in construction projects for the Turkish construction sector.