Relationship between Factors of Construction Resources Affecting Project Cost

The success of any construction project highly depends on how proper and effective the management of construction resources flow. Studies show that various resources factors affected cost management and have resulted to significant amount of cost overrun worldwide. However, a few investigations had been carried out in Malaysia regarding the effect of resources in construction industry. Hence, this study focuses on identifying significant resource factors causing construction cost overrun and also assessing the relationship between these factors. Data collection was carried out through a structured questionnaire survey consisting of 20 factors identified through a comprehensive literature review. Data was analyzed using statistical software package SPSS. The Cronbach’s alpha of the data was 0.910 which means that the collected data was highly reliable. The factors were ranked through mean rank approach and it was found that 3 most significant factors are “fluctuation of prices of materials”, “cash flow and financial difficulties faced by contractors” and “shortages of materials”. While the least significant factors in causing cost overrun are “insufficient numbers of equipment”, “relationship between management and labour”, and “labour absenteeism”. The result of Spearman test indicates that “cash flow and financial difficulties faced by contractors” with “financial difficulties of owner” correlate strongly at a significant level of 0.752. This identification of factors and relationships will help construction community in controlling resopurce factors for achieving project completion within the budget.