Identifying principal risk factors in Turkish construction sector according to their probability of occurrences: a relative importance index (RII) and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) approach

A construction project has many phases, all of which involve various risks. The first step in risk management is risk identification. The literature lacks to address identifying key risk factors affecting construction projects concerning the variables' likelihood of occurrences. The goal of this paper is therefore to investigate key risk factors affecting Turkish construction sector based on their probability of occurrences by using Relative Importance Index (RII) and Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). 201 valid responses to a questionnaire detailing 33 risk variables are analyzed using RII and EFA. The results emphasize that disaster and force majeure, project management, technical management, external, and design-estimation are the main risk factors in the construction projects. It is also found that using unqualified subcontractors/workers/staff during the process, delays in payments, economic matters such as inflation, speculations on prices, late change-order requests of project stakeholders and, failure to complete the work within expected budget limits are the top five most-likely risks while flood, boycott, landslide, attack, hurricane, tornado risks are rare. Through the findings, practitioners that consider defined risk factors when evaluating the potential risk management approaches may increase the accuracy of their risk response method and related cost estimates.