Eight interviews reveal why variation orders stall Oman’s fishery port projects

Variation orders — the formal contractual changes that adjust scope, design, specifications, quantities, methods or schedules during construction — are among the most persistent sources of cost overruns, schedule delays and stakeholder dissatisfaction in marine infrastructure. A new qualitative study, published in Frontiers in Built Environment on 26 October 2026, examines how these changes are managed in one of Oman’s most strategically important but understudied construction sectors: fishery ports, a key component of the country’s Vision 2040 infrastructure programme.

Researchers led by Masoud Alqassabi of Universiti Tenaga Nasional in Malaysia and Oman’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Water Resources conducted semi-structured interviews with eight experienced practitioners drawn from the three parties that hold formal contractual authority over variation orders in Omani fishery port contracts: government client engineers (three participants), engineering consultants (three) and contracting organisations (two). All participants had at least five years of direct fishery port construction experience, and six of the eight reported more than eleven years in the industry. Interviews, lasting 30 to 45 minutes each, were conducted between December 2025 and January 2026, audio-recorded with consent, transcribed verbatim and returned to participants for member-checking before analysis.

The analysis followed a six-phase thematic procedure combining deductive coding from the interview guide with inductive refinement as recurring sub-themes emerged. Each theme was validated with three evidence markers: the number of participants who mentioned it, whether it appeared across client, consultant and contractor roles, and a verbatim illustrative quote. The researchers report that no new codes emerged after the sixth interview, with the final two interviews confirming convergence across all five objective domains.

The first substantive finding is that variation order management in Omani fishery port projects is not chaotic. All eight participants described a broadly consistent, formally structured six-stage workflow: change identification on site, formal instruction or notice issuance, contractor submission of cost and time impact evidence, consultant evaluation of quantities and entitlement, client review and approval — typically through an internal committee or multi-layer structure — and implementation with closure through variation registers. The process is integrated into routine contract governance rather than handled ad hoc.

Yet that formal structure is systematically undermined by what the authors call governance friction. The dominant bottleneck, reported by all eight participants, was delayed decision-making and prolonged approval cycles driven by multi-layer committee governance, which extends cycle times, disrupts contractor cashflow and forces ‘proceed at risk’ decisions that elevate dispute exposure. Unclear authority limits and overlapping responsibilities, also reported by all eight participants, compound the problem: when approval thresholds are ambiguous, submissions escalate unnecessarily through higher governance levels, creating interference among parties and inconsistent prioritisation of pending variations.

Insufficient marine technical data was raised by six participants, reflecting the inherent difficulty of pricing and programming variations when seabed conditions, marine construction methods and environmental interfaces introduce high uncertainty into cost and time estimates. The researchers note this bottleneck is structurally embedded in fishery port delivery: the cost and logistical constraints of comprehensive pre-contract site investigation in remote coastal locations mean design assumptions are frequently revised during construction. Incomplete drawings and design ambiguity, reported by four participants, generated interpretive disagreements over scope boundaries, while contract ambiguity and lengthy rate negotiations, reported by two, were noted as significant escalators of individual variation disputes.

In response, participants converged on a seven-part governance model. An early warning system and clear approval timelines with defined authority levels each received full support from all eight participants, with participants calling for predefined service-level decision windows and delegated approval thresholds that reduce dependence on committee-driven processes. Design freeze gates before construction commencement, front-end risk reviews supported by enhanced marine and geotechnical investigations, and institutional lessons-learned mechanisms each received support from six participants. Digital variation order tracking systems, supported by four participants, were endorsed for improving transparency, monitoring approval cycle times and enhancing auditability. Dispute prevention arrangements, including structured negotiation periods and independent review options, were proposed by two participants as a final-layer defence against escalation into formal claims.

The study also produced stakeholder-differentiated mitigation strategies, distinguishing immediate operational actions from long-term institutional investments. Contractors were advised to conduct thorough site reviews, issue timely early-warning notices and method statements, and discipline marine construction sequencing in the short term, while building specialist marine expertise and adopting digital planning tools over time. Consultants were urged to improve design completeness, carry out cross-discipline coordination and constructability reviews before construction, and in the longer term strengthen geotechnical and marine investigation standards and implement staged design freeze governance. Government clients were called on to enforce decision timelines, clarify authority limits and reduce committee cycle times through delegated approval thresholds, with longer-term reforms including standardised variation procedures, digital platforms and improved regulatory interfaces to reduce permit-driven delays.

The authors frame the governance model’s claim to coherence through three theoretical mechanisms: reduction of uncertainty, by shifting change detection upstream; improved change-control capability, by fixing who decides, when and on what documented basis; and sustainable infrastructure performance, by institutionalising learning across the fishery port programme. They also cite a companion quantitative strand of the same research project — a structured survey analysed with partial least squares structural equation modelling, not yet published as a standalone article — which identified contractor-related causes and client-related causes as the only statistically significant direct predictors of project performance. The authors are careful to present this as converging, cross-method support rather than independent statistical validation, noting the companion data could not be independently re-verified within the qualitative paper.

The study’s limitations are explicitly acknowledged. The sample of eight interviews from a single national context constrains transferability, and the purposive sample excluded independent surveyors, port and marine authorities, environmental officers and digital-construction specialists whose perspectives could extend the model. The findings rest on practitioner perceptions rather than objective measurements of approval cycle times, variation frequencies or cost impacts, and the design is qualitative and cross-sectional, so the reported relationships describe practitioner-perceived associations rather than demonstrated causal effects. The governance model has not been prospectively tested in live projects; the authors recommend longitudinal case studies, a Delphi validation study with a wider panel of Omani experts, and quantitative analysis of actual variation registers and cost settlement data as next steps. Even so, the research offers the first empirically grounded diagnosis of variation order governance friction in Oman’s fishery port sector, and a practitioner-derived framework that policymakers aligned with Vision 2040 may now have reason to test at scale.

Subject of Research: Governance of variation orders in Omani fishery port construction projects

Article Title: Variation order management in specialized marine infrastructure: practice gaps, governance framework, and mitigation strategies for Oman’s fishery ports

Article References: Alqassabi, M., Norhisham, S., Ramli, M. Z., Alshukaili, A., & Salim, R. (2026). Variation order management in specialized marine infrastructure: practice gaps, governance framework, and mitigation strategies for Oman’s fishery ports. Frontiers in Built Environment, 12, Article 1969509. https://doi.org/10.3389/fbuil.2026.1969509

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fbuil.2026.1969509

Keywords: variation orders, fishery ports, Oman, marine infrastructure, construction governance, approval delays, thematic analysis, public procurement, stakeholder mitigation, Vision 2040, cost overruns, qualitative research