Management of environmental risk factors in highway construction projects in Sri Lanka with contractor's perspective

Abstract

Environmental risk factors are vital in highway projects and it has become a crucial issue in Sri Lanka. The contractor is the main contracting party who suffers due to those environmental risk factors. Thus, it is very important to investigate how to manage the environmental risk factors in highway construction projects in Sri Lanka with the contractor’s perspective. Accordingly, this research aimed at investigating how to manage environmental risk factors in highway construction projects in Sri Lanka with contractor’s perspective. The mixed approach was used for the study and initially a literature review was conducted in relation with highway construction projects in Sri Lanka. Then, a semi structured expert interviews were conducted to validate the findings to the Sri Lankan highway projects and analyzed with the use of manual content analysis. Finally, two rounds of questionnaire survey were conducted and analyzed collected data using statistical methods. 37 environmental risk factors were identified in highway construction projects in Sri Lanka with the contractor’s perspective and out of them, 11 risk factors were identified as the most significant environmental risk factors. According to the analysis “Natural resources depletion in Sri Lanka like soil, sand, aggregate etc.” has selected as the most significant risk factor by contractors. To manage above identified significant risk factors 24 most suitable risk response measures were selected. 13 out of them are common risk response measures and rest of the others were unique solutions for specific risk factors. At the same time environmental risk factors were mainly allocated to contractors in highway construction projects in Sri Lanka as per the perspective of the contractors. Finally, the recommendations were given to use of most suitable risk response measures in a meaningful way in highway construction projects to manage the environmental risk factors using the framework.