Causes and Effects of Design Variation on Road Construction Project in Lagos State

ABSTRACT This research project founds out design variation and its impact on road construction success in Lagos State. It is a key issue, because many road projects in Lagos State have inadequacies in the plans and specifications which have been major causes of changes to the contract. One or two major design variation that can be corrected which are Expertise of the consultants and bad project management which finally ends up causing major impacts on the success of road construction project and schedule growth. These dilemmas place an increasing pressure on stakeholders in the construction industry to search for solutions that will minimize variations in designs so as to maintain estimated construction cost and time while maximizing its quality. One hundred and thirty selected project clients, consultants and contractors in Lagos state of Nigeria were received well-structured questionnaires to get their responses on the causes and effect of design variation on road construction in Lagos State, and the analysis of data was done using table gotten by SPSS. The research study revealed that causes and effect of design variation on road construction in Lagos State causes cost overrun and sudden design change. Additionally, the research revealed that the issue of cost and time impacts on road construction could be managed by using construction recognized and accepted methodologies which identifies and quantifies the overall impact to the project. The research concludes that expertise of the consultants, bad project management, lack of effective design coordination among designers are the major causes of design variation on road construction projects success in Lagos State. It can be recognized from the results derived from this study, that design variation cannot be avoided in the construction industry, and there are causes and effects that must not be overlooked at the early stage of a design process that is being carried out by the design team mentioned above. Overlooking the expertise of the consultants at the design stage will certainly lead to design variation and this must be prevented at all cost.