| Abstract: | Construction industry is a major player in economy of any countries by generating employment and prosperity to the nations. However many projects in developing countries experienced very low performance in terms of time and cost. One of the contributing factors to this low performance among others is design change. This is because design change can affect project cost and schedules. With this background, the Objective of this study is to find out the existence and frequency of design change, identify the causes of these design changes and their impact, which contracting party is the more responsible in initiating these design changes and which is most affected as a consequences of these causes. The study design was Descriptive. Mixed approach was used and both primary and secondary data were collected using a questionnaire which consists of 32 potential factors for the cause of design change, major impacts and other questions which enable to achieve the objectives of the research were developed. The study finds that Change requested by the owner, poor communication between responsible parties, owners fail to review document at the right time, incorrect/unclear information given by the owner at initial stage of design and lack of precise and rapid decision were identified as major causes which results these design changes and client/employer were identified more responsible in initiating most of the design change related issues. The study also finds; increase in project cost, delay of project, demolition & rework, decrease in quality of work and decrease in productivity parties as a major impacts and clients as the most affected contracting party as a result of impact of design change.Accordingly the study concludes that design change as one major problem in Airport Expansion projects. |
