Causes of Inefficient Site Cost Management Systems in Arabian Gulf Construction Companies

Abstract

The cost of construction projects has a long history of exceeding the planned cost. At the project level, this is termed as “Project Cost over Run”. This research reviews the main causes of the inefficiency in the existed cost management systems applied by the Arabian Gulf Contracting Companies at the construction stage. The requirements of having an efficient cost management system (recording, monitoring and controlling functions) have been collected from previous researches to be used in a field survey on the construction companies in the Arabian Gulf to highlight the main causes behind inefficient management functions (monitoring and controlling of site costs in the construction projects in the region. This research is the first part of a M.Sc. research work which has been taken place on Saudi Arabian and Bahraini contracting companies to identify the efficiency of existed cost monitoring and control methods applied by these companies in their projects. The highlighted causes will assist project management of the construction companies in the Arabian Gulf region, as well as the other contracting companies, in evaluating and improving their monitoring and controlling their site cost at the construction stage.

Keywords: project management, construction management, cost management, site management