Comparative study between contractors' and consultants' evaluation of Cost Overrun factors in building construction projects in UAE

Construction sector is considered as one of the most important and rapidly growing sectors that form the basis of the economy in United Arab Emirates. Lots of construction projects in United Arab Emirates are experiencing cost overrun due to many factors, which in some cases leads to shutting down of construction companies and delay projects for several years. The need of a statistical analysis of the factors causing cost overrun and to create a clear image of how the industry professionals view and understand the problem are highly crucial. Using a selected set of 38 factors classified into five categories (cost estimating factors, construction parties factors, field factors, financing factors and construction items factors), these factors will be evaluated by the main two parties in any construction project, the contractor and the consultant. this research first identifies the main factors leading to cost overrun in UAE construction industry and then evaluate these factors from the contractor's and the consultant's perspective using a questionnaire survey that has been formed previously. Finally, a relationship between cost overrun percentage and factors will be established to create prediction models to evaluate the impact of these factors on cost overrun. Factor analysis and regression modeling are used to examine the effect of these factors on the cost overrun.