The thesis results have pointed out in detail the potential risks that have important impacts on the progress, cost, and quality of urban railway projects in Vietnam, including: (1) changes in government and donor funding policies; (2) changes in wages; (3) changes in conditions for calculating total investment; (4) changes in material costs; (5) economic recession; (6) errors in cost determination; (7) slow capital disbursement.
In terms of importance to the three main criteria of the project: cost, time and quality, the risk variable KT7 - Slow disbursement of capital has the largest risk priority index with a value of 0.187, ranked first. This result shows that slow disbursement of capital has a clear impact on the project during implementation. The capital plan, disbursement, and annual capital settlement are not suitable, this inconsistency is related to the project and is manifested in many forms. Slow disbursement of capital can originate from the RR of economic recession. The economic recession can reduce the budget of the government, the state, and donors, and thus cause slow disbursement of capital for the project. In addition, slow disbursement of capital can originate from changes in funding policies of investors and the government. Moreover, problems related to legal regulations also contribute to this risk. The impact of slow capital disbursement not only increases the project risk, but it also causes other risks for the entire project. For example, slow capital disbursement can lead to increased costs of slow disbursement, thus contributing to increased project costs. In addition, slow capital disbursement can lead to disputes between investors and contractors due to slow payment, which increases the risk of interrupted material supply or social factors arising from the project. Therefore, the factor of slow capital disbursement is assessed to have the highest level of risk affecting project objectives when considering the economic risk group. This is clearly shown for the Ho Chi Minh City Urban Railway Line, some of the causes leading to slow capital disbursement are as follows. Firstly, this project has ODA capital with the participation of many Ministries and Branches. In which, the unit signing the ODA loan is the State Bank; The unit that allocates the loan capital to implement according to the progress is the Ministry of Planning and Investment; the unit that manages and supervises the debt repayment is the Ministry of Finance; and the unit that uses the loan capital is the relevant Department such as the Ministry of Transport. With the participation of many relevant units, the capital allocation process may be delayed. Second, some problems arise in the process of determining the loan capital and the unit responsible for borrowing capital for the arising volume. Specifically, according to the official dispatch
No. 2336/BQLDSĐT-KHHĐ dated December 18, 2018 of the Urban Railway Project Management Board, the project is currently having some problems related to the determination of items subject to re-borrowing between the Ministry of Finance and the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, leading to the failure to determine the re-borrowing value of the project as well as causing difficulties in capital management (planning, reporting on loans and loan repayment, etc.) and disbursement of ODA capital according to the re-borrowing contract. Moreover, according to this document, there are currently many different opinions between the Ministries on the financial mechanism for the additional ODA capital due to the adjustment of the total investment, so the determination of the contents in the re-borrowing contract has not been implemented. Specifically, there is a difference in the opinions of the Ministry of Finance and the guidance of the Ministry of Transport on the items subject to re-borrowing of the project. This leads to inadequate capital provision and a prolonged lack of counterpart funds, which seriously affects the project's objectives.
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The factor ranked second with a standardized composite risk priority index of 0.171 is KT6 - Errors in determining costs. This calculation result is consistent with the survey results from experts with a value of MV = 5.455. Specifically, according to experts, the importance of this risk variable is high for the cost criterion (MV = 7.437), slightly high for the time criterion (MV = 6.141) and low for the quality criterion (MV = 2.789). Misdetermining costs can come from errors in applying standards, increased labor costs, and increased material costs. Improper application of raw material unit prices, changes in wages, and the impact of inflation and exchange rates have led to many errors in determining costs, contributing to economic RR. The results of this study are consistent with the actual situation of the project, some errors in cost determination can be mentioned. Firstly, in terms of norms, the project applied many Japanese norms that are not included in the current Norm system; applied many other Japanese cost coefficients that are not included in Vietnamese regulations or included in Vietnamese regulations but are many times higher. Secondly, some imported equipment prices calculated in the estimate are many times higher than the bid prices of contractors. For example, the train car price calculated in the estimate is 1.5 times higher; the price of power stations is 3.5 times higher on average; the price of toll collection system is 2.8 times higher on average. Thirdly, for package 1a, the determination of the package estimate has some errors such as calculating the wrong unit price of labor by 879,632 million VND; applying the unit price of fuel and iron at the wrong time
The estimated value of Ben Thanh Station is 222,788 million VND; applying a labor coefficient of 1.2 for tunnel labor costs of 29,076 million VND; incorrect cost of the camp is 25,957 million VND; Furthermore, the estimated value of Ben Thanh Station belongs to package 1a according to Decision 3512/QD-UBND of Ho Chi Minh City, including future lines 2 and 4, which are not part of package 1a, line 1 (the estimated value of line 2 is 345,906 million VND; line 4 is 50,519 million VND, not including the first floor). Fourthly, for package 1b, there were also similar errors such as applying a general cost ratio of 13% which is not in accordance with the provisions of Circular 04/2010/TT-BXD; applying an inappropriate design cost ratio; Applying unit price of raw materials that does not match the price announcement.
Changes in the conditions for calculating the total investment (changes in VAT, exchange rates, indirect costs) – KT3 is ranked third with a standardized composite risk priority index of 0.161. Specifically, according to the report No. 862/TTr-BQLDSDT, the conditions for calculating the total investment of the project have changed. In particular, the change in exchange rate from 1 yen
= 137 VND in 2006 to 1 yen = 200 VND in 2019 has significantly increased the project cost. Changing the conditions for calculating the total investment and the process of appraising and approving the total investment has significantly affected the project implementation time as well as the project quality. In addition, the KT2 variable - Salary changes with NRPI = 0.161 are ranked third with the KT3 variable. This is different from the results of the synthesis of assessments from experts when considering the importance of risk variables separately, without taking into account the interaction between factors in the model. Specifically, the average value of the importance of the two risk variables KT2 and KT3 is slightly high with values of MV = 5.568 and MV = 5.545, respectively.
Fuel and raw material costs change – KT4 is ranked fifth with a risk priority index NRPI = 0.129. In fact, the objective fluctuations in raw materials and the increase in minimum wages from 2006 to 2009 increased the total investment by 40% (according to the Investor's Report in Submission No. 862/TTr-BQLDSĐT). Based on the construction price index of traffic works of the Ministry of Construction in Ho Chi Minh City and the Yen devaluation announced by JICA, the devaluation of the domestic currency is 52% and the devaluation of the foreign currency is 10%. According to the currency structure in Decision No. 1453/QQD-UBND, the ratio of domestic and foreign currencies is 1:1 and the devaluation of the total investment from 2006 to 2009 is 31%.
Variable KT5 – economic recession with standardized composite risk priority index NRPI = 0.105 and variable KT1 – Change in government and donor funding policy with NRPI = 0.085 are ranked sixth and seventh in the economic RR group. This change can lead to a shortage of financial resources from investors and donors, which can cause delays and other financial problems. With the initially approved project content, the implementation capital includes Japanese ODA loans and counterpart funds from the Ho Chi Minh City budget. This project is implemented with a very large investment capital, so the project progress depends largely on the ability to pay on time, the ability to maintain a stable financial flow as well as ensuring counterpart funds for the project. In reality, the impact of economic recession and changes in government and sponsor funding policies on project objectives is not significant and is ranked after other risks in the economic risk group. Meanwhile, research results of other projects abroad show that these risk factors have a great impact on project objectives, typically studies by Audit Scotland [25], Haynes W [64], Hodge GA [69].
4.6.2. Technical risk group
The technical risk group (RRK) ranked second among the five RR groups considered in terms of risk level with a standardized composite priority index of 0.276. This result is different from the results of the experts' evaluation synthesis when the MV value = 7.812 and ranked first in the list of RR groups. Specifically, the MV value of the importance of RRK to cost, time and quality is 7.507; 8.141 and 7.789 respectively, this result is shown in Table 4.12. However, due to some limitations of the conventional statistical method that have been discussed, the calculation results according to the ANP model will have higher reliability.
The second position of the RRK group reflects the reality of the role of this group of factors as well as the realization that the results greatly affect the cost, implementation time and quality of the project due to the risks in this area. RRK is of high importance and affects the entire project in many aspects. First of all, RRK can slow down the project implementation process, causing the project to be behind schedule. In addition, RRK can affect the productivity of the inspection and supervision team to detect poor quality work that needs to be redone and thus affect
to project quality and cost. This group of factors has also been of interest to many domestic and foreign researchers and has conducted studies on their impact on project objectives such as studies by Audit Scotland [25], HS2 [71], Yasemin N [136], PAC [98], Hodge GA [69], Ghosh S and Jintanapakanont J [59]. In this group, the highest priority belongs to risks K3 - Unclear project scope or change in project investment scale. The analysis results of the thesis also show that variables K6 - Design changes, changes in construction techniques, and errors in quality supervision, K5 - design documents with many shortcomings are important RRs, affecting the time, cost and quality of the project.
For variable K3 – Unclear project scope definition, the change in investment project scale is ranked as the first priority in the group with a standardized composite risk priority index NRPI = 0.208. For the Ho Chi Minh City Urban Railway project, specifically Ben Thanh – Suoi Tien Line 1, this risk is of great importance to the project objectives. This is specifically shown as follows. First, the change in investment scale is specifically shown with the largest change when increasing the forecast passenger traffic in 2040 from 800,000 passengers/day to 1,020,000 passengers/day (1.27 times higher than the initial approval), which has led to a change in station scale. In particular, according to Decision No. 4480/QQD-UBND dated September 21, 2011, the scale of Ben Thanh station is 2 floors with a floor area of 12,720 m2 with the function of a central station. However, the investment scale has been adjusted and increased to 4 floors with a floor area of more than 30,000 m2 with the function of a central station integrated with a commercial center. The increase in construction volume due to increased passenger traffic and increased actual volume has increased the total investment by 43% according to the State Audit Report on December 10, 2018. In particular, increasing the scale of the station increased VND 3,224 billion; increasing safety features, increasing the number of equipment due to increased scale is determined to increase costs by VND 3,802 billion. In addition, the project's construction volume was increased to bring higher investment and exploitation efficiency. Specifically, increasing investment in locomotives, carriages, and station equipment to meet the demand for increased passenger traffic forecasted for the target year of 2040 (instead of 2020 as in the investment project). Furthermore, initially, the route will be Ben Thanh (at Quach Thi Trang Square) - Le Loi - Nguyen Sieu - Ngo Van Nam - Ton Duc Thang.
– Ba Son – Nguyen Huu Canh – Van Thanh – Dien Bien Phu – Saigon Bridge – Hanoi Highway and ending at Long Binh Depot. Currently, the route is being oriented to be extended from Suoi Tien station to Bien Hoa city, Dong Nai province [1]. The cost for the route extension study is determined by the investor as the cost incurred for the General Consulting package and has signed a supplementary contract. The research results of the thesis are consistent with previous studies on urban railway projects in Vietnam such as Tran Quang Phu [10], ADB [16], World Bank [133].
Next, variable K6 - Change in design, change in construction technical measures is a risk variable of great importance to the project criteria when the overall risk priority index has been standardized through the ANP method at 0.180 and is ranked 2nd. This position is similar to the individual assessment results from experts when the calculation result of the average value MV = 5.808, ranked after the position of variable K3. This RR variable has affected the project criteria through many aspects. Firstly, the decision to adjust the beam style from Super T beam to U-shaped beam of the elevated section increased the value of the project to 1,420 billion VND. Changing the beam style changed the span size from 33m to 30m, creating 54 bridge piers (the original basic design was 467 piers increased to 519 piers). Second, along with the change in scale, the design related to items such as the station will be changed, which affects the cost, time and quality of the project. In fact, the design has to be adjusted many times, such as adjusting the technical design of Ben Thanh underground station to integrate lines 1, 2, 3a and 4 in the future. Specifically, during the implementation of the underground package (CP1) 2.6km long from Ben Thanh station to Ba Son station, the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee adjusted the underground space planning. The underground shopping center stretching from Quach Thi Trang roundabout to the City Theater is built on Line 1, integrating Ben Thanh station and City Theater station. Therefore, the start date of this area was delayed by more than 2 years compared to the original plan. In 2011, the project adjusted some items when the scale of Ben Thanh station changed. This adjustment contributed to the increase in the cost of the project. In addition, the investor adjusted the open excavation section Km0+305 – Km0+615 from a circular structure and closed excavation to a box structure combined with diaphragm walls and open excavation. Third, there were many changes in the technical design documents compared to the special technical design for some items such as
Open-cut tunnel from Km1+892-Km2+020; City Theater station; rail elevation from Km0+615 to Km1+600; access gate No. 4 and connecting tunnel (City Theater station); open-cut tunnel from Km0+305 to Km0+615. Specifically, at the open-cut tunnel location from Km1+892-Km2+020 (L128m), the basic design was designed in a box shape with a foundation structure of 1m thick Barrete piles. However, when designing the technical unit, it changed to a bored pile foundation system with a diameter of 1m and combined with steel pipe piles as a diaphragm wall. The conflict and design changes seriously affected the cost, progress and quality of the project. The results of this study are consistent with previous studies by some authors such as Tran Quang Phu [10] when this author also identified conflicts and changes in design that seriously affected the progress of the Ben Thanh - Suoi Tien Urban Railway Line No. 1. The results of the importance of this risk variable have also been similarly mentioned in some studies by foreign authors such as [26], PAC [98], Hodge GA [69], Ghosh S and Jintanapakanont J [59].
The next risk that needs attention is the variable K5 - errors in the construction process with the risk priority index NRPI = 0.144, ranked third in this RR group. Meanwhile, the priority position of this risk variable is ranked fourth based on the individual assessment results of experts with the value MV = 5.310. The difference in the priority ranking of the risks further shows the practical significance that the ANP model brings in the project risk assessment process. With the third position, K5 - errors in the construction process shows the importance of this risk variable to the criteria of the urban railway project, Line 1 Ben Thanh - Suoi Tien. Besides the changes in design, in reality, the current urban railway investment project in Ho Chi Minh City requires technology, construction techniques, and construction methods much higher than other ground transportation systems. That is why the variable K5 - Errors in the construction process (difficulties in the construction process due to special construction technology...) has received the attention of many experts. Currently, some modern technologies used for this project include (1) tunneling construction technology using underground boring equipment (TBM robot), this is the first technology applied in Vietnam; (2) prestressed concrete tunnel shell technology for the route, this is a product manufactured using advanced technology with high waterproofing, small error, meeting high progress quality; (3) balanced cantilever technology for overpass girder construction, a technology requiring high technical requirements appearing for the first time in
Vietnam, with a U-beam structure designed by contractor Systra (France). In the context of the project, the application of this technology is currently facing some difficulties such as the construction technique is applied for the first time in Vietnam, so there is no construction experience, mostly relying on the support of foreign consultants. The geology of the central part of Ho Chi Minh City is weak ground geology, so it is difficult to apply underground excavation equipment using robots. Moreover, many high-rise buildings and old architectures nearby will be affected during the underground construction process. Therefore, in order to minimize the impact of this factor on project objectives, managers need to consider this factor with high priority. The results of identifying and evaluating the priority of this risk variable have also been mentioned in previous studies such as Audit Scotland [25], HS2 [71], Yasemin N [136]
One of the next RRs affecting the project is the K2 variable - the design documents with many shortcomings ranked in fourth place with a standardized overall priority index of 0.134. Meanwhile, based on the individual assessment results of the experts, the fourth priority position belongs to the K5 variable - errors in the construction process with a value of MV = 5.310 and this K2 variable is ranked 5th with a value of MV = 5.258. By considering the overall interactive relationships between the criteria and between the RR groups, the priority level of the K2 variable is reliably assessed. The reality of the project shows that the total investment of the project is established according to the method of determining according to the basic design, however, the basic design documents do not fully show the contents, many construction items are missing, not enough basis for establishing the total investment as well as accurately forecasting the project completion time. Specifically, the part of soft ground treatment, the part of temporary road construction, temporary support system, construction wall; the part of monitoring and protecting utility works; the part of other work is determined by the Consulting unit in the total investment cost without clearly determining the volume of work. Moreover, the basic design documents also do not show the connection between Line 1 Ben Thanh - Suoi Tien with other future lines. For example, the basic design does not show the connection between Railway Line 1 with Railway Lines 2, 3A and 4 at Ben Thanh station. The basic design documents only show the location of Lines 2, 3A and 4, the elevation of Line 2 compared to Line 1. The basic design documents do not clearly show the connection between lines such as passenger transfer through the lines, passenger control, technical systems,