Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) Industry are continuously challenged to design and build unique, large and technically complex projects within the boundaries of budget, schedule, and social and environmental law constraints. These complexities lead to conflicts, claims and disputes during their life cycle. It is estimated that the industry spends $13-26 billion per year on conflicts and claims with total costs reaching as high as $50 billion when the additional expenses of legal disputes are added. These figures emphasize the need for an encompassing framework to manage conflicts, claims and disputes. In this context, the proposed research will focus on achieving the following six objectives: (1) understand causes behind conflict, claim and dispute occurrence in Projects based on the hypothesis that these conflicts occurs due to an interaction of key project characteristics; (2) determine a Project Conflict Profile and estimate the Expected Costs of these claims to represent the expected number and cost of conflict, claim and dispute during the project life cycle; (3) understand characteristics of the Dispute Avoidance and Resolution Techniques required to prevent/resolve conflicts based on the hypothesis that some types of conflicts occurring on a project may require different resolution approaches both in terms of effectiveness and economic feasibility; (4) determine effectiveness of chosen Dispute Avoidance and Resolution Techniques to resolve conflicts and minimize its impact, and Estimate the expected Value of Settlement for each type of conflicts in order to provide a predetermined plan to include specific techniques in the project resolution ladder; (5) evaluate cost/benefit tradeoffs of Dispute Avoidance and Resolution Techniques implementations for a given project, and determine a Dispute Avoidance and Resolution Techniques investment profile to justify the additional capital expenditures required for each of the chosen Dispute Avoidance and Resolution Techniques; and, (6) integrate results in a Conflict Management Plan to proactively monitor and control conflict occurrence and resolution in a project. To achieve these objectives, the proposed research methodology will consist of a formal cycle of data collection, formalization, testing, validation, and refinement.
The project will focus on integrating research, industry and education at every stage. Through this integration, students will gain valuable experiences by having construction and industry partners involved in the process. Concurrently, practitioners will benefit by their involvement in the development and testing of the proposed framework. In order to reach educators, practitioners, researchers, and students who were not involved in the proposed activity, broad dissemination of the project results will be actively sought. Ultimately, in order to make the research truly successful, involvement from a diverse group of students and practitioners, in terms of economic, social, cultural, racial, and gender backgrounds, will be a priority.
