ASTUDY OFTHE RELATIONSHIPBETWEEN MATERIAL WASTE AND COST OVERRUN IN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

Abstract

While wastage of materials has become a serious problem requiring urgent attention in the construction industry, cost overrun is a problem which affects 90% of completed projects in the world. The argument on how to eliminate cost overrun has been on-going for the past 70 years as on-site wastage of materialsleads to increase in the final project cost. This paper examines the relationship between the causes of material waste and those of cost overrun at the pre-contract and post-contract stages of a project. The paper adopts the desktop methodological approach. This involves comparing the causes of material waste and those of cost overruns from the literature to determine the possible relationship. The result reveals that all the causes of material waste also cause cost overrun at the pre-contract and the post contract stages of a project. However, 96.88% and 81.81% of the causes of cost overrun also cause material waste at the pre-contract and post-contract stages respectively. There is an 86.74% overlap between the causes of material waste and those of cost overruns at all stages of a project. Other causes which are not related are mostly, the micro-economic and macro-economic factors. Based on these findings, it can be concluded that effective management of material waste would translate into a reduction in the level of project cost overrun. The study recommends that construction-project managers as well as the construction practitioners should encourage the management of material-waste causes, as it has the potential to minimise the causes of cost overrun for a project.