The impact of deviating from set guidelines and procedures in the implementation of road construction projects.

Delay and cost overruns are common in construction projects and road construction projects in Malawi are not an exception (Yaw Frimpong, 2003). Road construction projects in Malawi have become a challenging activity to venture into due to uncertainty of whether payments for work done will be made on time for smooth running of the project. Public construction projects ought to be lucrative due to their sizes and availability of funding that they receive. However, in a situation where you have outstanding payments as huge as US$58,340,766 (Gala, 2014), and in a developing country, it is only clear that contractors working on these projects must be facing financial hardships. The aim of the research was to identify difficulties contractors are facing in view of the existing scenario. This was a quantitative descriptive study. Convenient sampling was used to obtain the sample size of 220. Self-administered structured questionnaire was used to collect data. A desk study of relevant secondary data was also done. The collected data was analysed using excel to obtain frequencies, percentages and mean. The respondents included contractors, consultants and clients. Sixty-five percent of them had between 11 and 20 years of experience in the construction of roads. Only 7.7% (n=17) were registered engineers. The study revealed that 59% (n=144) of the respondents reported delayed payments as a factor that affected performance negatively. Eighty three percent (n=183) reported lack of skilled labour force. Based on the results it is recommended that GoM should stop awarding new contracts until the arrears are cleared or unless other sources of funding are made available. GoM should make a deliberate effort to put aside funds for road construction purposes. Contractors should make deliberate programmes to send their staff for refresher courses. GoM should enforce observance of road reserves in accordance with Public Roads Act