تاخیر مواد و تامین تجهیزات در پروژه های بزرگراهی در نپال

Delay in the delivery of materials and equipment to construction sites is often thought of as a contributory cause of cost overruns in construction projects in developing countries. A cursory examination of the environment in which projects are executed in developing countries appears to support this thinking. However, there does not seem to have been much research work conducted that investigates whether this is actually the case and also assesses the causes of these delays and magnitude of their impacts on project costs. This research was aimed at firstly ascertaining the occurrence of material and equipment procurement delays in highway projects in Nepal. An assessment of the causes of the delays and the magnitude of their impact on project costs was also made. The survey method was used in conducting this research involving 22 highway projects. The main causes of material and equipment procurement delay were found to be (in rank order) organizational weaknesses, suppliers' defaults, governmental regulations and transportation delays. However, the actual impact of these delays on project costs was found to be on average, only about 0.5% of the total budgeted cost of the projects. Among materials, delays in the supply of aggregates were found to occur most frequently while delays associated with pavers occurred most frequently among equipment.

The primary goal of any construction project is the transformation of the expressed desire of the owner into tangible artefacts that satisfies that desire. For such transformations to be cost-effective, human and material resources have to be garnered and managed with the highest degrees of efficiency achievable. Since any artefact or structure is much more than the sum of the materials that comprise the structure, it stands to reason, that at the very least, a prerequisite for cost-effective construction is the availability of materials at the time and location that these materials are required on site. Not any less important are the equipment and manpower required to place these materials in the exact location and sequence that have been prescribed either in the contract documents or dictated by acceptable standard practices in the industry. The term procurement encompasses a wide range of activities that includes purchasing of equipment, materials, labour and services required for construction and implementation of a project [1]. However, this paper uses the term in the limited context of materials and equipment.

The study came up with some interesting results. It confirmed the existence of material and equipment procurement delays in road projects in Nepal. The total cost impact was insignificant, averaging about 0.48% of the total budgeted costs of the projects studied. However, care should be exercised in extrapolating or generalizing these results to other countries or projects. Under similar project environments with the same factors influencing procurement, impact costs could be far higher for a more complicated project like an industrial project or even a commercial building project. Road projects are far less complicated than most other types of projects with relatively fewer materials involved. Industrial projects, on the other hand, are characterised by a large number of complicated mechanical, electrical, instrumentation and piping activities with complex inter-dependencies requiring a relatively higher number of different types of materials. This would not only mean that a larger number of activities could be directly affected but also that the combinatorial effect of a far greater number of downstream activities being affected by upstream ones could also occur. Thus delays in the delivery of materials to site resulting in their non-availability for scheduled operations will have a more pronounced impact percentage-wise on overall costs. Furthermore, labour costs for activities on industrial projects are likely to be higher as the ratio of skilled labourers to unskilled labourers is relatively high. The same is true of commercial building projects, which are again characterized by large numbers of different types of materials, complex inter-dependencies and relatively high skilled-to-unskilled labour ratio. Organizational weaknesses and suppliers’ defaults were found to be the most significant causes of procurement delay followed by government regulations and transport delay. This finding is significant because it provides an insight into the source of problems in material and equipment procurement. Furthermore, the facet of the materials and equipment procurement issue in Nepal and possibly other developing countries that provides room for optimism is that the underlying causes are not immutable characteristics of the physical environment or geography of the region but rather manifestations of the consequences of poor management at various levels in the construction supply chain. It is our hope that this research and other similar research to be conducted in the future will pave the way for developing countries to streamline their materials and equipment procurement systems to help them compete successfully in an increasingly complex and global construction market place of this millennium.