Classifying Influential Information to Discover Rule Sets for Project Disputes and Possible Resolutions

Public-private partnership (PPP) is a strategy where governments encourage private institutions to financially support public construction projects, by providing proper incentives based on collaboration with private institutions. However, disputes may occur during a contract management. This paper investigates various public-private partnership (PPP) disputes and their critical influential factors for associating fundamental project information and dispute resolutions. In this study, knowledge is extracted from the association rules so that dispute handling patterns can be identified from historical database. Analytical results show that the rule sets achieve 83.92% confidence level. By applying the results in practice, project managers can determine the likely method for dispute resolutions with known project attributes, dispute items, and the phase in which a dispute occurs. This research demonstrates an effective application and valuable reference for early notice of dispute handling methods in public infrastructure projects.