Comparative Performance Evaluation of Design-Build and Traditional Procurement Systems for Highway Projects in Afghanistan

A project procurement system outlines relationships, responsibilities and roles of the project team members and the sequence and structures of the activities required to deliver a facility. Currently, in Afghanistan design - build and traditional procurement systems are the two main procurement systems used to deliver highway projects. Highway clients, however; have not been fully satisfied with the Afghan industry’s abilities to complete their projects on time, within the budget and to an acceptable quality. Clients’ needs and expectations require an assessme nt of the performance of the design and build, and the traditional project delivery systems for highway projects. This research, therefore; offers an empirical comparison of the design - build and the traditional procurement systems on project duration, cost and quality. Questionnaires surveyed by telephone interviews were used to collect the actual data of executed highway projects. The research involves collection, checking, validation and analysis of the data provided. The results indicate that the design - build was superior in time performance, while it had slightly poorer performance in cost saving in comparison to the traditional procurement system. On average, both design - build and traditional procurement systems had similar standards of project quality . Having evaluated the project performance, it was concluded that design - build can significantly reduce the delivery time of highway projects. These findings can potentially assist the highway clients in selection of an appropriate procurement system for highway projects, and greatly improve the understanding of the performance of an individual procurement system