Search results

It is widely accepted that one criterion for determining if a construction project is successful is whether it is completed within the expected budget. There have been advancements in the management of building projects throughout time but cost overruns remain a key concern in the construction sector internationally, particularly in emerging economies such as Ghana. This study aims to answer the question, “What are the critical success factors (CSFs) that can assist reduce cost overruns in public sector infrastructure projects in the Ghanaian construction industry?”

This study used a quantitative survey method. The questionnaire was pre-tested by interviewing 15 contractors to ascertain the validity of the content. Factor analysis and multiple regression were adopted to analyze the data.

This study discovered that the critical factors that can reduce cost overruns in construction projects in Ghana are directly linked to five themes: early contractor involvement in the project planning stage, adequate funding, good project team relations, competent managers/supervisors and project participant incentives/bonuses. This study identifies indestructible, empirically measurable important success criteria for reducing cost overruns in public building projects in Ghana.

When well thought through from the project initiation stage to completion, these critical successes can also be used to deal with damaging economic effects such as allocative inefficiency of scarce resources, further delays, contractual disputes, claims and litigation, project failure and total abandonment.

The uniqueness of this research resides in the fact that it is, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, a first-of-its-kind investigation of the CSFs for reducing cost overruns in public building projects in developing countries.

The building sector is vital to a nation’s economy, as it has a major influence on economic activity and growth, job creations and the advancement of infrastructure. Intricate challenges that are inherent in crises such as the COVID-19 outbreak lead to material scarcities, project delays, labor shortages, escalated expenses, funding challenges, regulatory obstacles and dwindling investment funds, all of which culminate in costs that are in excess of those budgeted. While numerous studies have explored the ramifications of COVID-19 on project budgets, there is little, if any, data available on forecasting the magnitude of this impact.

This investigation seeks to bridge this knowledge deficiency by devising a predictive tool grounded in an ordinal logistic regression method. An online survey was designed and disseminated to gauge the views of construction field experts about the diverse contributors to excessive costs during the viral outbreak, and a predictive tool, crafted from the survey participants’ feedback.

Findings showed that smaller-scale enterprises and contractor-centric establishments faced greater adversities than medium-to-large ones and consultancy-or-owner-type entities.

The insights from this research shed light on the amplified risk of higher project costs amid health crises or analogous events, underlining the imperative need for fortified risk management approaches to bolster project outcomes. By factoring in demographics, this research offers policymakers a refined lens through which to customize interventions and promote balanced and enduring advancement in the construction industry.

Urban rail projects are typically large-scale transport infrastructure projects (megaprojects) which have many potential risks that can influence the strategic goals of owners. However, there is a paucity of studies which explore the impact of risks on both “urban rail” project time and cost together considering quantitative assessments. Therefore, this paper focuses on investigating critical risks and quantifying such risk impacts on urban railway project schedule and cost in practice.

A combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods comprising semi-interviews with five experts and a questionnaire survey of 132 professional respondents is used. The data were modeled using Monte Carlo Simulation to predict the probability of project schedule and cost.

The results show that 30 risk variables are categorized into seven main groups which have significant impacts on both project time and cost. Outstanding five risk variables were highlighted as follows: (1) project site clearance and land compensation; (2) design changes; (3) physical project resources; (4) contractors’ competencies and (5) project finance. Such findings were supported by Monte Carlo simulation which predicted in the worst case that the project may suffer 11.03 months’ delays and have cost overrun with a contingency of US$287.68 million.

This study expands our knowledge about time and cost contingency of urban metro railway implementation across developing economies and particularly within the context of Vietnam. Policymakers will not only gain an understanding about risk structure but will also recognize the significant impacts of critical risk through risk impact modeling and simulation. Such an approach provides insights into risk treatment priorities for planners so that they can proactively establish suitable strategies for risk mitigation in practice.

This paper shows how Bruno Latour’s novel work and methodological approach can enrich management and organization studies, accounting and science and technology studies on what it takes to redesign sustainable societal infrastructures. Latour’s notions of trials of strength, macro-actor and design as redesign are used in a case study to describe and analyse how the laboratory becomes decisive in negotiating the bridge design and project budget to the benefit of a more sustainable transport infrastructure.

Latour’s notion of the detective-author is used to research and write a longitudinal qualitative case study that reconstructs the project processes and chain of related events by following the actors/actants.

The case analysis shows how a project design becomes an emerging powerful macro-actor through the mobilization of laboratory simulations and calculations. The role of the project budget changes; from a strong supporting role as input to a decision option in favour of a cheaper stayed bridge to a weak role as an output from a process of redesign supporting a much larger, costlier and more sustainable suspension bridge.

We use Latour’s methodological approach to engage primarily in detailed process descriptions to go beyond the often-pointless call for further theory development and to rather account for what is at work in specific situations. Latour’s notions of redesign as an outcome from trials of strength, we consider a useful approach to further our understanding since it also takes account of the distributed knowledge production that is integral to the actors’ cognitions and recognitions. Relatedly, the specific Latourian notion of redesign opens up new avenues for researching the more or less powerful role accounting devices such as a project budget can play in valuing, supporting and/or undermining the design of sustainable societal infrastructures.

Despite several research efforts tackling construction project risks globally, tertiary education building projects are not devoid of experiencing risks with cascading effects on projects. In the past decades, there has been increasing application of linear assessments of risks in construction risk management practices. However, this study aims to assess the influence of risk factors on the success of tertiary education building projects using a structural equation modelling approach. This study will further reinforce the risk factors that require attention because risk factors are not linear but interdependent.

A quantitative research method was undertaken in this study, where data collection was achieved via a structured questionnaire survey. In total, 452 questionnaires were administered to client representatives, consultants and contractors involved in executing tertiary education building projects across five public tertiary education institutions in Ondo State, Nigeria. Of 452 questionnaires, 279 were found usable for the analysis, implying a response rate of 61.73%. The Cronbach α test, average variances extracted and composite reliabilities values show high reliability and internal consistency of the instrument used for data gathering. Furthermore, the study adopted percentile, mean, correlation, regression analysis and structural equation modelling for analyzing the data collected upon which the study’s inferences were based.

The study found that three out of six criteria for measuring the success of tertiary education building projects were significantly affected by risk factors while using the structural equation modelling technique. With this non-linear method of assessment, completion to time was significantly impacted by environmental risk factors. In addition, safety performance was also significantly influenced by logistic, environmental and legal risk factors; furthermore, logistics, design and environmental risks significantly affected profit. However, completion to cost, standard/quality and end-user satisfaction was not significantly affected by the risk factors in tertiary education building projects.

The quantitative data used for the analysis are limited to the tertiary education building projects from selected five tertiary education institutions in Ondo State; therefore, the results do not indicate all tertiary institutions in Nigeria. In addition, the findings are based on building projects that were procured through a competitive tendering arrangement only and thus considered a limitation for this study.

Not all the risks significantly influence the tertiary education building projects. Therefore, risk factors with a significant effect on the success indicators of tertiary education building projects should be prioritized for a successful project. While risk factors have not affected the completion to cost per se, the study implies that the resultant effect of risks on other success indicators could have a cascading effect on these projects in terms of cost and time overruns. These results may assist during the project risk management while also addressing complexity and uncertainty to avoid chaos in a tertiary education building projects.

The study found significant construction risk factors impacting the success of tertiary education building projects using a non-linear methodology, an extension beyond the usual linear method of assessment of risk impacts on the project performance.

The construction industry is frequently scrutinised by the public for a variety of issues, including waste, inefficiency, narrow profit margins, scheduling setbacks, budget overruns, quality concerns, trust deficits, transparency issues, coordination challenges, communication issues and fraud. The purpose of this paper is to assess the effect of blockchain technology adoption on the construction supply chain.

This study used a quantitative research approach through a questionnaire survey that was conducted among professionals in the Nigerian construction industry using the snowball sampling method, which resulted in a selection of 155 respondents. The collected data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling, enabling a thorough assessment of the proposed relationships and offering valuable insights specific to the construction industry.

The study’s findings validated the conceptual framework established. The results indicated that implementing blockchain across all stages of the construction supply chain has the potential to improve the construction process. The study also revealed that blockchain technology will significantly affect the construction supply chain in a positive manner.

This research was carried out in the South-western region which is one of the six geo-political zones in Nigeria using a cross-sectional survey method. The study holds implications not only for local construction practices but will also contribute to the broader discourse on national construction sector challenges and possible solutions.

The findings of this study will be immensely beneficial to both professionals, practitioners and stakeholders in the Nigerian construction industry in learning about the potential of blockchain technology application in improving the construction supply chain.

The study in this paper constructed and evaluated a conceptual framework by exploring the connections between the variables. The results have significant implications for the construction sector, as they provide avenues for enhancing the construction process and the overall supply chain. These findings are valuable for researchers examining the potential effects of blockchain technology on the construction supply chain.

Completing construction projects within the planned schedule has widely been considered as one of the major project success factors. This study investigates the use of technologies to address delays in construction projects and aims to address three research questions (1) to identify the adopted technologies and proposed solutions in the literature, (2) to explore the reasons why the delays cannot be prevented despite disruptive technologies and (3) to determine the major strategies to prevent delays in construction projects.

In total, 208 research articles that used innovative technologies, methods, or tools to avoid delays in construction projects were investigated by conducting a comprehensive literature review. An elaborative content analysis was performed to cover the implemented technologies and their transformation, highlighted research fields in relation to selected technologies, focused delay causes and corresponding delay mitigation strategies and emphasized project types with specific delay causes. According to the analysis results, a typological framework with appropriate technological means was proposed.

The findings revealed that several tools such as planning, imaging, geo-spatial data collection, machine learning and optimization have widely been adopted to address specific delay causes. It was also observed that strategies to address various delay causes throughout the life cycle of construction projects have been overlooked in the literature. The findings of the present research underpin the trends and technological advances to address significant delay causes.

Despite the technological advancements in the digitalization era of Industry 4.0, many construction projects still suffer from poor schedule performance. However, the reason of this is questionable and has not been investigated thoroughly.

The World Bank-sponsored public financial management reforms attempt to instil fiscal discipline through techno-managerial packages. Taking Ghana's integrated financial management information system (IFMIS) as a case, this paper explores how and why local actors engaged in counter-conduct against these reforms.

Interviews, observations and documentary analyses on the operationalisation of IFMIS constitute this paper's empirical basis. Theoretically, the paper draws on Foucauldian notions of governmentality and counter-conduct.

Empirics demonstrate how and why politicians and bureaucrats enacted ways of escaping, evading and subverting IFMIS's disciplinary regime. Politicians found the new accounting regime too constraining to their electoral and patronage politics and, therefore, enacted counter-conduct around the notion of political exigencies, creating expansionary fiscal conditions which the World Bank tried to mitigate through IFMIS. Perceiving the new regime as subverting their bureaucratic identity and influence, bureaucrats counter-conducted reforms through questioning, critiquing and rhetorical venting. Notably, the patronage politics of appropriating wealth and power underpins both these political and bureaucratic counter-conducts.

This study contributes to the critical accounting understanding of global public financial management reform failures by offering new empirical and theoretical insights as to how and why politicians and bureaucrats who are supposed to own and implement them nullify the global governmentality intentions of fiscal disciplining through subdued forms of resistance.

The objectives of this study are twofold: first, to identify the effect of sustainability management on the success of international development projects, and second, to investigate the moderating role of political and social skills on this relationship.

This study adopted a quantitative research methodology based on questionnaire data collected from 43 international development project managers from various fields in Burkina Faso (West Africa). Descriptive statistics and exploratory and confirmatory analyses using principal component analysis were used to assess the quality of the measurement model. A multiple regression analysis based on the partial least squares approach was used to test the hypotheses.

The results show that sustainability management positively contributes to the success of international development projects. However, given the specificities of these projects and their perception of success, the project coordinator's political and social skills do not predict a greater impact of sustainability management on the success of international development projects. The study also found that project coordinators prioritize their technical skills over behavioral ones.

This study fills a gap in the literature, given that little is known about the moderating role of political and social skills in the effect of sustainability management on the success of specific projects such as international development projects.

New product development (NPD) projects are strategically important for firms’ operations but suffer from high failure rates. Leadership is a key factor for project success. However, in contrast to positive project leadership, project managers’ knowledge hiding has received little attention. Drawing on the input-mediator-output (IMO) framework and model of work team resilience, we explored the effect of project managers’ destructive knowledge hiding (i.e. evasive hiding and playing dumb) on project team performance (i.e. efficiency and effectiveness) and the serial indirect effect through team psychological safety and transactive memory systems.

We conducted a time-lagged multiple-sourcing investigation of Chinese high-tech firms and tested the hypotheses using data collected from 105 NPD project teams.

Our findings demonstrated that project managers’ knowledge hiding negatively affects NPD project team performance and indirectly negatively affects transactive memory systems through team psychological safety. Moreover, project managers’ knowledge hiding exerts a negative indirect effect on team performance through team psychological safety and transactive memory systems in serial.

This study contributes to the literature on operations management (OM) by broadening our understanding of the connection between project managers' destructive knowledge hiding and the failure of NPD projects. In providing such insight, it also offers practical guidance for overcoming team-level obstacles arising from project managers' knowledge hiding.