The use of costs management tools and techniques in highway projects in Rwanda

Abstract

Civil Engineering projects have long recognized the need for controlling cost overrun in projects. Several tools and techniques have been established to control construction costs, unfortunately all of these techniques rely on controlling line items which have already experienced cost escalation. The purpose of this research is to investigate tools and techniques for managing costs in highway projects in General and particularly in Rwanda. It is crucial that project managers, contractors, client and consultant to understand and use the project cost management tools and techniques in managing highway projects. It incudes to review the literature in the general areas of project cost management tools and techniques, to investigate the frequency of use, challenges that impact on the use of these tools and techniques, the level of understanding as well the level of need of training on the use of cost management tools and techniques for managing highway costs from the perspective view of the direct stakeholders in Rwanda. Through extensive literature review and analysis of data collected in the road construction industry in Rwanda, it was found that, there is high level of need for training in using cost management tools and techniques because most of the accurate tools and techniques for managing and developing projects costs are not correctly applied or totally not used. This study only focuses on local contractors, consulting firms operating in Kigali as these represents the majority of companies that are consuming big investment in road construction on the entire territory of Rwanda. The study was carried out by means of questionnaires and the data was analyzed using statistical analysis and percentage index. From the research study, it was found that the order of magnitude estimates; expert judgment, analogous estimating, parametric and reserve analysis are techniques most frequently used in highway projects in Rwanda while truly, they are techniques only used when there is no much information about the project i.e. at the earliest stage of the project, therefore not accurate.