The price of risk in construction projects: research methodology

Here's the abstract of a paper I co-authored with Will Hughes and Edward Badu, and presented at the CIB World Building Congress conference at Cape Town, South Africa in May 2007.

The price of risk in construction projects: research methodology

Samuel Laryea, Edward Badu
Department of Building Technology, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, PMB, Kumasi, Ghana

Will Hughes
School of Construction Management and Engineering, University of Reading, PO Box 219, Reading, UK

Formal and analytical risk models that construction contractors can incorporate into the bidding process to assess project risk have proliferated in recent years but they are unused in practice. The low take up of this proliferation of models may indicate a gap between the theory and practice of contractors’ risk assessment. The need is for a better understanding of how contractors arrive at a price, and how that price is influenced by the apportionment of risk. This question started the search for an appropriate research methodology to investigate the extent to which risk apportionment influences pricing levels of contractors. A critical evaluation of the application of three potential strategies to the research indicates that a combination of ethnographic and experimental research will provide the most appropriate answer. The triangulation is primarily necessitated by the two-dimensionality of the research question. When doing research, this example can help others in justifying their research approach.

Keywords: ethnography, experiment, research methodology, risk, survey.

REFERENCE:
Laryea, S., Badu, E. and Hughes, W.P (2007) The price of risk in construction projects: choosing of an appropriate research methodology. In: Haupt, T. and Milford, R. (Eds.), Procs of CIB World Building Congress: Construction for development, Cape Town, South Africa. Cape Town: Document Transformation Technologies, 51-62.