DISPUTE RESOLUTION AIDED TOOL FOR CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS IN EGYPT

Contract relationships in construction projects in Egypt have become increasingly strained in recent years. Working relationships, communications, and contractual commitments are often not carried out in good faith. Hence, adversarial approaches to public and private sectors of the construction industry in Egypt generate a substantial increase in the use of binding arbitration and the judicial system for the settlement of contractual disagreements. In this research, a survey questionnaire was designed to obtain the relative weights of the factors that influence the Dispute Resolution Strategy (DRS) Decision. Twenty six combinations of project situations were established based on ten factors, established after studying the causes of disputes with the aid of literature and unstructured interviews, which affect the DRS-Decision. Experts were asked to perform pair-wise comparisons for the ten factors and advise on the recommended resolution methodology for the different status of DRS-Decision's factors. Although negotiation is usually the first attempt to solving any dispute, it sometimes could waste time and consequently money without reaching a satisfying solution. A computer model is proposed to inform the user of whether to quit negotiation and/or any amicable solution to save time and money and resort to arbitration/litigation instead, or to stick to negotiation and/or any amicable solution as it's the only way by which the dispute could be resolved. Results obtained from the survey were utilized in the development of the computer model to provide a simple and an easy to use tool that could advise decision makers on the most appropriate dispute resolution strategy that would mostly succeed; save time and money. A case study is presented to validate the computer model and demonstrate its use.