ANALYZING DYNAMICS OF IRAN'S PUBLIC CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS DELIVERED UNDER DESIGN-BID-BUILD METHOD

Currently, many public construction projects in Iran are facing time delays, cost overruns, and poor quality. Many research efforts have been conducted to identify the root-causes of the problems these projects are facing. Most of these research efforts, though, have adopted survey and interview-based methods to investigate the contributing factors. Financial resource shortage, project management weakness, and contractual disputes are among the commonly identified contributing factors. In a systemic view of the root causes of problems in public construction projects, projects organization and related regulations can be responsible for the main parts of the root causes. Meanwhile, uniform or standard-form contracts set by Iran's government have major contributions to the structure of the public construction projects organization. Uniform contracts, developed by dedicated groups of experts, save project owners' time and prevent many possible critical issues from the complexity involved in public construction projects. However, in-advance development of the uniform contracts poses the risk that any possible shortfall in the uniform contracts can get populated among all public projects implemented across the country. To address this issue in this research a conceptual system dynamics-based analysis approach was adopted. This approach was used to analyze the complex dynamic interactions of different stakeholders formed as results of the pre-determined instructions of uniform contracts in the public construction projects. The main focus of this research is on the dynamics of the public construction projects implemented under the design-bid-build project delivery method. Two uniform contracts commonly used for the implementation of the design-bid-build projects in the country, including consulting services and construction services, were investigated. Main causal loops formed as results of current settings of these uniform contracts were extracted and analyzed. As a result of this analysis, assigned roles in these uniform contracts to the public project owners and project designers were challenged and adjustments to the assigned roles were recommended.