Analyzing Causes of Disputes in Public–Private Partnership Construction Projects

Public–Private Partnership (PPP) contracts have been developed as an innovative and new method of delivering infrastructure projects to promote various project objectives including life cycle cost, project management, quality, among others. However, PPP projects are still prone to conflicts and disputes among the contracting parties leading to suboptimal project implementation and decreased adoption rates. While existing research papers focused on the general risks and challenges associated with PPP agreements, none of them has examined the causes of disputes in PPP projects. The goal of this paper is to fill this knowledge gap through qualitative and quantitative research methods. First, 37 PPP legal case studies of disputes were collected in relation to infrastructure and construction projects. Second, social network analysis was performed to identify the most central causes triggering disputes in PPP projects. Third, detailed qualitative analysis was used to investigate the key sources of challenges associated with the identified central causes. The outcomes show that the most central causes leading to disputes are related to “Payment and Financial”, “Legal and Regulatory”, and “Poor Management”. While the main sources of payment and financial problems were related to inadequate financial and budget analysis as well as lack of funding, the main sources of legal and regulatory challenges were related to lack of stakeholders’ understanding of their contractual obligations. As for poor management, slow and delays in decision-making was found to be the main related problem. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge by offering guidelines for industry practitioners to avoid dispute occurrence in PPP projects and consequently improve their implementation in the construction industry.