Civil and Project journal

Identifying and prioritizing factors that lead to claims in the cost-to-pay method of construction contracts

https://doi.org/10.22034/cpj.2025.536227.1387
Volume 7, Issue 8 - Serial Number 78
November 2025
Pages 34-48
Civil and Project journal

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

Amir Akbari 1
Meysam Safshekan 2
Ardalan Feili 3

1 Civil Engineering Group, Apadana Institute, Shiraz, Iran

2 Management Group, Apadana Institute, Shiraz,, Iran

3 Management Group, Apadana Institute, Shiraz, Iran

Abstract
The construction industry is one of the important and driving sectors in developing countries. In construction contracts, usually due to unforeseen circumstances, errors in the initial design, and so on... The parties to the contract face conditions that can lead to disputes and claims, and consequently, the project's claims are exposed to risk or uncertainty. The present study aims to identify the factors leading to the emergence of claims and to rank these factors in the cost-plus contract method so that employers and contractors in this field can take appropriate practical actions based on this ranking. The present study is descriptive in nature and method, with an applied objective. In order to collect data, questionnaires based on multi-criteria decision-making methods used in this research (the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory method and the analytic network process) were utilized, which were completed by ten members of the technical committee of the Urban Development and Revitalization Organization of Shiraz Municipality, each with at least ten years of experience in the field of urban development. The collected data were analyzed using the Superdecision software. Based on the results, the factors of unilateral agendas of supervising engineers, the lack of awareness of the contracting parties about the contractual method, and the level of participation in the contract had the most significant impact, while the factors of total work cost and the quality of the completed work had the least effect on the claim proposal in the cost-plus contract method. It is suggested to create a knowledge-sharing database to prevent and avoid the recurrence of similar claims, and to establish appropriate mechanisms to prevent the re-submission of claims.

Keywords

Claim management
arbitrary agendas of supervising engineers
lack of awareness of the contractual method by the parties to the contract
level of participation in the contract
payment method - objective
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  • Receive Date 20 June 2025
  • Revise Date 07 July 2025
  • Accept Date 21 July 2025
  • First Publish Date 21 July 2025
  • Publish Date 23 October 2025

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