ABSTRACT
The study assessed client's perspective of cost estimates on infrastructure projects prepared by quantity surveyors on public and private infrastructure works in Zambia. Convenience and purposive sampling were used to identify the respondents from two provinces. A total of 12 semi structured questionnaires were collected from clients in the public sector, private sector, parastatal, and quasi-institution. Further, 12 semi-structured questionnaires were collected from quantity surveying firms. Results indicated that quasi-government and public sector clients did not expect final costs to exceed 25% above the initial cost estimate. Private sector clients did not expect the cost estimate to exceed 10% of the initial estimate. However, selected projects recorded cost overruns more than 90% above the initial estimates for public works and 0 to 30% for private sector works. Results demonstrate the differences in cost estimate expectation between the public and private sectors.
