The impacts of obstacles in Asian cross-border construction

Abstract

In the light of the rapid growing investment in infrastructure over the past ten years, Asia has developed into one of the most dynamic construction markets in the world. Although the ongoing market-oriented reform progresses in this region have resulted in the rapid increase in import of construction professional services from developed countries, obstacles like various technical standards and local preference policies still lead to remarkable cost growth in cross border cooperation. Five categories of obstacles are identified in this paper, namely, business environment risk, regulatory restrictions, contractual arrangement, standards difference, and culture difference. The likelihood of these obstacles' occurrence as well as their impact on the profitability of cross border construction are uncertain. The degree of their effect also varies across Asian countries. This study intends to investigate the performance of top international construction firms based in Asia and quantify the impacts of obstacles using influence diagram and a survey of these firms. © 2004 ASCE.