ANALYZING CAUSES OF CHANGE ORDERS IN KOREA ROAD PROJECTS

The Korean government implemented 259 road projects from 2004 to 2007, valued at $18.4 billion. Change orders of these road projects occurred 8,973 times and, subsequently, caused significant increases in the cost of the projects, approximately up to $4.2 billion (22.8% of the initial budget). These significant problems of huge change orders require a more workable control system for budget management whereas the effectiveness of the government's control is still not satisfied. However, previous approaches and studies mostly limited their analyses to simply classifying the causes of the change orders. This paper investigates the real frequency and cost impacts incurred by each cause of a change order, primarily based on 218 road projects in Korea. The paper then identifies the attributes of change orders through a survey of 204 project participants in that those sources were inevitable or avoided if properly managed. The causes of the change orders are further analyzed with analysis of variance (ANOVA) in connection with contract volume, bid award rate, the contractor's capacity to perform, and the design company's capacity. This study found that if the contract volume is smaller, then the possibility of change orders is higher. Interestingly, if the bid award rate is less than 67.5%, it signifies the highest rate of change orders. In addition, the contractors whose construction ability is assessed as the top-ranked group showed the lowest change order rates. With these results, this paper provides the preventive guidelines for reducing the likelihood of change orders.