Methods for Modeling and Evaluating Construction Disputes: A Critical Review

Cost and time are the targeted outcomes of any successful construction project, and disputes over these two key factors constitute a major obstacle to successful project outcomes. As escalated levels of dispute are becoming increasingly unavoidable, the construction industry is aiming to develop dispute identification strategies to reduce and eliminate them during construction. However, existing research on construction disputes appears to give more consideration to dispute resolution than it does to avoiding conflict and preventing disputes from arising in the first place. This paper aims to minimize disputes during construction by addressing the causes of disputes during the pre-construction phase. As an integral part of ongoing research, it presents the results of a thorough study encompassing a critical review of previous research on construction disputes. Several conflicts and disputes are categorized and analyzed to allow for the future determination of their direct and/or indirect links to the pre-construction phase. This review also elaborates on the different methods of research adopted in the literature and the relevant research tools utilized. The research highlights the use of fuzzy logic coupled with structural equation modeling (SEM) as a recognized and valid modeling tool in construction projects, as it models and establishes an appropriate framework for dispute modeling and evaluation. The findings of this review therefore call for a further investigation of and deep research into the relationship between the characteristics of the pre-construction phase and the types of disputes and their likelihood of taking place during the construction phase itself. These findings can be utilized to develop an operational framework for predicting dispute occurrences during construction. The paper concludes by providing a developed hybrid fuzzy-SEM model to quantify the probability of dispute occurrence in construction projects, thereby enabling project stakeholders to predict, identify, and properly manage dispute occurrences during the pre-construction phase.