Risk Factors and Potential Solutions for the Construction Industry in China

Yutian Chen, Oswald Chong

Abstract

The Chinese construction industry (CCI) has grown to be one of the largest in the world within the last 10 years. The size of the CCI is on par with many developed nations, despite it being a developing country. Despite its rapid growth, the productivity and profitability of the CCI is low compared to similar sized construction industries. In addition to the low efficiency of the CCI, the minimal documented performance information collected, shows projects being completed over budget, over the scheduled time, with poor quality of work. A literature research was performed on other developing countries similar to the CCI, to identify if there were any solutions that had been proven to improve the productivity and performance of a construction industry. It was found that Vietnam, The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and India were the closest to China with enough documentation on their construction industry. Both countries identified the Best value Approach (BVA) as the only solution with documented performance showing it could solve the issues developing countries face with their construction industry. This paper proposes that more research should be performed looking into the ability of the CCI to implement the BVA.