Author: Chan, Chun Tao
Title: Investigation of the risk of variations and reworks and their effective mitigation strategies for private residential building projects in Hong Kong
Advisors: Chan, W. M. Daniel (BRE)
Degree: DIREC
Year: 2023
Subject: Residential real estate -- China -- Hong Kong
Construction industry -- China -- Hong Kong -- Management
Risk assessment
Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations
Department: Department of Building and Real Estate
Pages: xxx, 322, 65 pages : color illustrations
Language: English
Abstract: “Variations” are always required to be implemented in construction projects to implement instructions by the Architect’s Authority. In private building developments, most refer to the same provision to issue instructions describing the changes required to the design, quality, or quantity of the works or the imposition of or change to any obligation or restriction on the contractor. Where appropriate, the architect will issue revised drawings and/or schedules to proceed with the works.
Variation provisions are allowed in the contract for changes; however, if such provisions are not properly used, managed, or controlled, both cost overruns and project postponement could result during the post-contract stage. In this case, large-scale of improvement works might be necessary after handing over to clients. Some research studies are available in the literature; however, the use of contract documents with scientific method analysis in Hong Kong’s private building developments, especially private residential buildings, is rather limited. Using real-life project data from contract documents for analysis by computing the project program is more realistic and reliable. Due to the above phenomenon, a critical review and analysis of the cost and time overruns of private residential building projects using real-life project data and various computing methods is essential and timely.
The aims of this thesis are to review the common types of variations in Hong Kong’s private residential building developments and to determine the key factors leading to project cost and time overruns. To achieve these aims, computer software from IBM (IBM SPSS Modeler) was adopted to categorize the variation types and analyze the variations through a text analysis model. An integration of the text mining technique and the Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detector (CHAID) was applied in this research study. Common types of variations and their inter-relationships were also identified and analyzed in this study.
A case study review of large-scale variations and reworks was undertaken after identifying the common types of variations. Necessary precautions and effective mitigation strategies are recommended to mitigate the chance of generating excessive large-scale variations in future construction projects.
Rights: All rights reserved
Access: restricted access

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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://theses.lib.polyu.edu.hk/handle/200/12894