Assessing causal relationships between construction resources and cost overrun using PLS path modeling focusing in southern and central region of Malaysia

Abstract

Construction resources are fundamental requirement for any construction project to achieve project completion within estimated budget. The fundamental construction resources include material, manpower, machinery and money. These resources have significant effect on construction cost. Construction cost is now a days facing problem of coverrun. Hence, it is very ctitical to assess impact of various resources on cost overrun. Data collection was carried out using structured questionnaire survey amonst client, consultant and contractors in southern and central region of Malaysia. A total of 234 questionnaire were collected including 128 in southern part and 106 in central part. Data was analayzed with PLS path modeling using SmartPLS v2.0 software. The result showed that resources have significant effect on cost overrun. Extracted variance showed that in southern region, around 40% of cost variation can be caused because of construction resource while in central region variance is achieved as 59%. Material resource was found as common and most significant resource in southern and central region. GoF value was achieved as 0.529 and 0.566 for southern and central regions respectively confirming the explaining power of the proposed path model.