Causes of Time and Cost Overrun: A Case Study of Health Sector Projects in Peshawar, KP

Abstract

Public sector projects in KP suffers time delays leading to years of delay and cost overrun of over Rs25 billion, surprisingly close to half of this amount i.e. 11.2 billion is reported in the health sector projects in KP. This paper therefore, explores factors leading to time and cost overrun in the construction and IT projects of Health Department Peshawar, Government of KPK, Pakistan. To explore the causes of cost and time overrun, the study utilized Yin’s case study model thus collecting data through qualitative semi-structured interviews. The study used Miles and Huberman (1994) approach of thematic modelling for data analysis. The finding reveals that factors leading to time and cost overrun are administrative issues, delays in fund release, political Issues, monitoring &control, work site issues, inflationary effects, poor cost estimation, issues from contractor’s side, stakeholders and IT issues. While, certain factors causing overrun in specific to IT projects are resistance by the stakeholders for change, lack of understanding on the part of consumer about the benefit of the project and rapid changes in technology.