The impacts of change management practices on project change cost performance

Change cost is one of the most sensitive aspects of construction project management, but it is also one of the most difficult to control. It has been widely recognized that construction projects that adopt change management practices generally incur lower change costs in comparison with project budgets. The relationship between change management practices and cost performance is investigated. Construction project data for this research are derived from the Construction Industry Institute Benchmarking and Metrics database. Multiple one-way ANOVA and linear regression are performed to investigate the effectiveness of individual change management practices elements and overall change management practices implementation in controlling project change cost, respectively. The data analysis results show that individual change management practices elements have different levels of leverage in helping to control project change cost and that using change management practices is truly helpful in lowering the proportion of change cost in project actual cost.