CLAIMS IN INTERNATIONAL CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS IN ETHIOPIA and CASE STUDIES ON SELECTED PROJECTS

Abstract

With the advent of the liberalization of the economy
and availability of funds from international
financers, there has been a surge of large-scale civil
engineering construction in Ethiopian construction
industry. While this large scale investment in the
construction sector has been a major step in the
right direction, this venture has been beset with
unfortunate incidences of claims ranging in millions
of Birr and sometimes even in excess of 100% of the
project costs. Claims are demands for money and/or
time extension that a contractor rightly or wrongly
believes he has a right to. Whilst claims are an
inevitable fact in the construction industry, future
handling of such incidents will have to depend on
developing a healthy understanding of their
occurrences and fonnulating .a strategy of
minimizing risks associated with it. The objectives of
this paper are, therefore, to investigate the causes of
potential claims and to propose a possible
mitigation as to the handling of similar incidents in
the future. In addition to literature survey,
questionnaires based studies were made to identify
thE!causes of claims in Ethiopian construction sector
and interviews were also conducted with various
parties of the sector. The paper attempts also to
analyze case studies and points out remedial
measures, to reduce their impact. One of the main
observations of this research work has been the fact
that the Ethiopian construction industry seriously
lack qualified engineering professionals with an
appropriate level of training in construction
management, international contract administration
and claims handling. Finally the findings of the
study are discussed and recommendations
forwarded