Contractual Disputes in Government Construction Projects

Abstract

The objective of this research is to determine causes of disputes in government construction projects that employed the standard public construction contract, annexed to the 1992 Procurement Regulations of the Prime Minister's Office. Case data were acquired from 121 assessments of actual dispute cases from 1992 to 1998, published by the Office of the Legal Counsel Office of the Attorney General. The findings indicated that the main dispute between owners and contractors were extension of the project time, followed by the dispute regarding payment. Naturally, majority of the disputes occurred during the construction phase and most of the disputes occurred due to ambiguity of the project scope or lack of significant provisions in the contract. These led to the misinterpretation of the contract by the owners which were government agencies, and resulted in disputes cases which were submitted to the Office of the Attorney General for providing legal opinion.  However, the majority of these cases were ruled in favor of the contractors.  It was also found that the Article 22 - Extension of Time in the standard public construction contract was the major ground of the disputes.  It was suggested that this Article should be further clarified by adding definitions or terms of the basis for extension of project time.