THE CAUSES OF BAD PROFIT IN OVERSEAS CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS

International construction projects are exposed to various and complicated risk factors stemming from different political, economical, social, and cultural backgrounds, which make contractors entering into international construction to experience severe losses. It implies that overseas markets do not necessarily secure the high return, which is typically expected to in the high risky attempts. Accordingly, contractors need to evaluate various risk factors faced with overseas construction projects that can possibly aggravate the profitability. This paper aims at establishing a valid groundwork for further research on developing the integrated risk management model. For this end, it analyzes the long-term trend of profitability on total of 3,487 projects performed by Korean global contractors in world-wide construction markets during the last four decades. Then, it investigates the possible factors/causes of bad profit that have affected the profitability significantly through the structured surveys of 90 real overseas projects based on the project-specific information and experiences of Korean contractors in overseas markets. Furthermore, it analyzes relative importance of these factors/causes and identifies the important features expected for the risk management of international construction projects. Finally, vital distinctions between success and failure projects and lessons learned to improve profitability are then distilled.