Assessment of Factors Influencing Contract Administration and Management Practices in Public Construction Projects in Rwanda

Abstract

Construction contract administration in Rwanda suffer from various challenges due to factors such as regulatory frameworks, infrastructure development, and economic conditions, shortages of skilled personnel and insufficient resources for project oversight, delayed payments, Cultural diversity and language barriers among stakeholders, Misunderstandings or misinterpretations of contractual terms and specifications. This has been observed in other African Countries because Construction contract administration has been followed from European industries (Rugambwa and Al, 2020) Particularly in Rwanda, Public infrastructure that were aiming at the welfare of the people through providing them with basic infrastructures faced delays in completion while others were abandoned due to lack of proper contract administration and management framework in place. Construction projects in Rwanda is the most competitive and risky business. The money involved in this sector is from public fund, so it becomes very important to see that such projects get successful to avoid any type of blockage of funds. In addition, it is equally important to complete the project in time to avoid obsolescence loss of the product. The aim of this research was to formulate an appropriate contract administration and management framework that can be adopted in public construction projects in Rwanda. Data collection was done using a self-administered structured questionnaire and interview to the public construction projects players. A sample of 100 respondents was selected through a purposive sampling technique, probability sampling and census technique to participate in this study whereby project Engineers, chief budget managers, legal advisors, Procurement officers and contractor’s staff, were the respondents in this study. The data provided by the questionnaires was analysed using descriptive statistical methods. The study findings show that the unit price contract is mostly used in public construction project in Rwanda, Value for money, familiarity and previous experience with the contract type, desire to avoid claims and improve working relationship, relative risk aversion of employer and contractor (contractor and employer diversification and size, project size for the contractor) and financial costs are the most important factors affecting the choice of contract type in construction projects in Rwanda among others. Findings show also that Poor contract administration and lack of reporting system are the most important factor that affect performance of public construction project and from which disputes among parties arise. The administration of construction projects in Rwanda should be done through the developed framework because it will help the contract administrator to administer Construction projects in planned manner and develop a better relationship between the owner and the contractor by reducing conflicts. The study recommends that public construction industry players in Rwanda adopt the proposed contract administration and management framework to enhance project performance and finally it recommends that contract management law and existing practices in Rwanda should be revised/changed to create the enabler environment for this framework to operate because introducing a construction project team (project manager, Contract administrator/Formulator, Construction site/Operations Manager and a Contract manager/Implementer, legal in one project would be a paradigm shift from our current practices in Africa.