Costing differentials of contracting in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

A system for classifying and ranking the construction and maintenance contractors in 5 categories for each construction sub-sector is set up in Saudi Arabia, as part of regulating the construction industry. Short of public and private agencies efforts, is to establish a cost index in the construction industry in Saudi Arabia at the micro level. This led to have various contractors establishing their own undisclosed cost databases. Due to the scarcity of transparency in the construction industry combined with insufficient information of cost database; this paper approaches this problem for two purposes. The first is to expose construction unit costs distribution among contractor categories; and the second goal, is to examine the correlation of the contractor ranks versus their respective average unit costs.