MK Consultus, in collaboration with Currie & Brown UK Limited, Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb) and TCC ADR Centre Pakistan, has surveyed to produce the first comprehensive research on the causes of disputes in Pakistan’s construction industry. The survey findings will pave the way to understanding the key causes of disputes and help develop appropriate strategies to avoid them.
This report has been devised to promote dispute avoidance and collaborative working by highlighting the key causes of disputes. The results of this report highlight that over 95% of construction projects are marred with significant additional time and cost related to disputes. Payment delay has been the biggest issue and cause of disputes followed by access to site, with behaviour and competency of the project teams of different parties being the third main reason.
As expected, results vary by province and industry. Surprisingly, the report indicates that ADR is the most common form of dispute resolution, while party- to-party negotiations account for almost 50% of the disputes. There could be several reasons for such negotiations and research suggests that these vary from maintaining relationships to not understanding parties’ rights, obligations, and liabilities. Arbitration and mediation are also shown to be on the rise. The results are comparable to global norms where negotiation, mediation and arbitration are the most common methods of dispute resolution and generally the steps to finality.
The objectives of PCDR are as follows:
- To understand and identify the root causes and analysis of key factors disrupting Pakistan’s construction industry.
- To enable awareness about dispute avoidance and collaborative working.
- To support and identify appropriate strategies to mitigate and avoid disputes.
- To pave the way for appropriate legislation governing the construction industry and ADR mechanisms.
- To enable year-on-year comparison of industry performance by establishing benchmarked data through regular publication of this report.
For more information, please visit www.pcdr.pk.
