The potential effects of variation orders on institutional building projects

Purpose – To provide an in‐depth analysis of the potential effects of variations in institutional building projects, which would be helpful for building professionals in assessing and taking proactive measures for reducing the adverse impact of variations.Design/methodology/approach – To achieve the study objectives, a questionnaire survey was carried out to collect information on potential effects of variations. Responses from 28 professionals working for a developer organization (a government agency) were analyzed. Furthermore, 26 face‐to‐face interviews using the questionnaires were also analyzed.Findings – The results suggest that the most frequent effects of variations were increase in project costs, additional payments for contractor, progress affected but without any delay, completion schedule delay, increase in overhead expenses and rework and demolition. Recommendations were suggested based on the findings of the research and literature review.Research limitations/implications – This paper presen...