Identification of Factors Affecting the Performance of Rural Road Projects in Colombia

Adriana Gómez-Cabrera, Amalia Sanz-Benlloch, Laura Montalban-Domingo, Jose Luis Ponz-Tienda and Eugenio Pellicer
Additional contact information
Adriana Gómez-Cabrera: Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Universidad de los Andes, 111711 Bogotá, Colombia
Amalia Sanz-Benlloch: Construction Project Management Research Group, Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain
Laura Montalban-Domingo: Construction Project Management Research Group, Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain
Jose Luis Ponz-Tienda: Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Universidad de los Andes, 111711 Bogotá, Colombia
Eugenio Pellicer: Construction Project Management Research Group, Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 18, 1-18

Abstract: Rural roads play an indispensable role in economic and social well-being, especially in developing countries, contributing to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. For this reason, it is necessary to plan these projects properly to guarantee their success. In this line, the objective of this research is to identify significant variables generating overruns in time and cost using empirical data of 535 rural road projects in Colombia from 2015 to 2018. Bivariate analysis, with statistical tools like Spearman’s Rho and Kruskal–Wallis, allowed identifying that higher values of variables like budget and project intensity are related to higher deviations in cost and time. Additionally, it was found that projects with shorter durations are reporting higher time overruns. The worst performers are projects executed in the year that council mayors start their terms, those developed in municipalities with more resources, and those awarded using a competitive bidding process. Multivariate analysis, through Random Forest, assessed the effect of considering all variables interacting simultaneously and ranking them in order of importance. The results demonstrated a relationship between cost and time performance, and that numerical variables are more significant than the categorical ones. This study contributes to a better understanding of the causes of delays and cost overruns on rural roads, providing useful insight for researchers and industry practitioners.

Keywords: rural roads; cost overruns; time overruns; public projects; project management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/18/7377/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/18/7377/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:18:p:7377-:d:410745

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().