Published Paper Details:

Large investments, public as well as the private, will be needed in various infrastructure sectors to meet the growing needs of the Indian economy. The public sector would continue to play an important role in building infrastructure and would need to ensure efficient and timely construction of projects within the agreed costs. The various departments and undertakings of the Central Government as well as the State Governments have been undertaking construction projects through the conventional item rate contracts where the Government provides the detailed design as well as the estimates of quantities for different items of work (Bill of Quantities). Payments to the Contractor are made on the basis of measurements of the work done in respect of each item. Experience shows that item rate contracts are prone to excessive time and cost overruns, besides recurrent disputes involving large claims. The reasons for the poor performance of item rate contract include inadequate project preparation and estimation coupled with allocation of several construction risks to the Government.(CIDC).EPC Contracts have long been used in infrastructure sector and proven to be cost and time effective. NITI Aayog in a statement in year 2016 said, all the public sector buildings above 100cr shall be procured via EPC Contracts. This study aims to find out the suitability of EPC contracts in public sector building projects based on certain parameters and success factors of EPC Contracts.