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The purpose of this paper is to identify factors affecting performance of heritage conservation projects in terms of project management parameters of time, cost, and quality.

An exploratory study was conducted in India, wherein 41 conservation professionals were interviewed. The method adopted for the study was unstructured interviews, wherein the respondents were asked open-ended questions about the issues faced in such projects and factors affecting project performance.

The interview recordings and notes, made during the exploratory study, have been manually coded to identify the most frequently mentioned problems, group them into categories, and assess their relative importance.

This paper has presented a broad overview of the challenges faced by heritage conservation projects in general. Further research is necessary to analyse if the challenges depend on factors like type of heritage, project delivery model, and stakeholders involved, and to develop mitigation strategies for these challenges.

The findings from this study can be used by practitioners to improve performance of heritage conservation projects in terms of time, cost, and quality.

The findings of the exploratory study help to better understand the reasons of poor performance of heritage conservation projects in terms of time, cost, and quality. The paper has identified major challenges of the sector, and assessed their relative importance, which can help in developing project management strategy for future projects.

Utility relocation issues are unfortunately frequent and recurring problems in several countries’ highway projects. Very few studies have addressed the utility relocation issues in highway projects. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, this paper explores how the utility relocation issues are managed in highway projects. Second, this paper systematically identifies the prioritized technical and coordination strategies to be adopted to avoid delays in utility relocation.

Multiple case-based research methodology was used to explore how the utility relocation issues are managed in highway projects. Empirical evidences from 11 road and bridge projects in India were used to develop the descriptive storyline for each of the project. The strategies used to manage the utility relocation issues were identified from three sources namely literature review, case studies and nominal group technique (NGT). The strategies were then evaluated quantitatively using NGT.

The analysis of the case studies showed that the delays in utility relocation were in the range of 5-52 months. It was found that the duration of relocation of utilities is impacted more significantly by the complexity of underground utilities rather than the size of the projects. Strategies that are used to manage utility relocation were identified across two groups namely; technical and coordination strategies.

Recommendations are provided for the practical use and policy changes.

The prioritized technical and coordination strategies can be used systematically to avoid delays in utility relocation.

The purpose of this paper is to present a case, with live examples from a construction industry development initiative in India, for developing a proactive construction clients charter; and a core set of key performance indicators (KPIs), as basic tools for facilitating the expectations of this special issue in “securing clients’ organisational objectives and project aspirations throughout construction project lifecycles” apart from empowering construction industry improvements in general.

Having identified 19 critical issues in the Indian construction industry at two construction clients-academia roundtables, two of the “action teams” formed to address specific issue sets, separately developed a relevant construction clients charter and useful KPIs, respectively, through a combination of literature reviews and brainstorming conference calls, along with iterative drafts of, and feedback on interim outputs. Validation of “working papers” presented at a “Consolidation Roundtable” of construction clients and their consultants, elicited further suggestions for fine tuning of final outputs.

The charter was formulated in structured steps, including identifying “priorities” under four categories: overall, expectations from supply chains, by supply chains and by end users. The six sub-heads of the charter are on procurement, design, innovation and technology, project execution, human resource development and worker welfare, and quality, safety and sustainability. The “suggested KPIs” for building clients in India enable organisations to choose: from three different groups (i.e. design phase, construction phase, or business outcomes), and at three different levels (i.e. project/organisation level, benchmarking club level, or industry level).

There is no known overarching Construction Clients’ Charter at present. Some project KPI sets are available elsewhere. However, those developed in India, while focusing on project performance, also connect to organisational performance and business outcomes. Furthermore, KPIs are provided to separately probe client, consultant and contractor performance. Significantly, the charter and KPIs are outcomes from an industry-led self-improvement initiative launched with building construction clients at the forefront, rather than a top-down imposition from government. Furthermore, while prioritising client aspirations, they also address common supply chain and end-user concerns, which may also be interpreted as a longer-term win-win-win client’s aspiration.

The weak competencies in urban local bodies (ULBs) for implementing public private partnership (PPP) projects are recognized as a major hurdle in uptake of the PPP model in India. Competency‐based management provides a systematic solution for addressing the competency gap in ULBs, which comprises four components: competency identification, competency assessment, competency development and competency monitoring. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the development of a PPP competencies assessment (PCA) tool for assessment of competencies in ULBs for implementing urban PPP projects.

The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) was used for modeling of competencies involved in urban PPP projects. The application of the PCA tool was showcased with a case study of PPP projects in the municipal solid waste management (MSW) sector.

The PCA tool is effective in assessment of competencies in ULBs. The outputs obtained from the PCA tool provided detailed information on competency profile of the ULB, competency gap and aggregate measure of PPP competencies index.

The study contributes towards the growing body of knowledge on competency development in ULBs for implementing urban PPP projects. The results would also help policy makers to formulate approaches to overcome the competency gap in ULBs.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze involvement of external agencies for supplementing competencies in Indian urban public private partnership (PPP) projects. There are two key aspects which need investigation before making a decision to involve external agencies in urban PPP projects: reasons for involvement of external agencies and competencies to be supplemented by these agencies.

A questionnaire survey was conducted among urban PPP experts and ULB representatives for investigating the above aspects. A case study analysis with five urban PPP projects was also performed for investigating involvement of external agencies in the practical realm.

The reasons for involvement of external agencies to supplement competencies rated high in importance are improvement in quality of deliverables, making available unique competencies for implementing urban PPP projects and transparency in implementation of urban PPP projects. The five most important competencies to be supplemented by external agencies are transaction design, evaluation, project marketing, project development process management and PPP process management.

The study contributes towards the growing body of knowledge on roles and responsibilities of external agencies in urban PPP projects. The results would also help the policy makers to effectively address competency bottlenecks faced by urban PPP projects.

Public private partnerships (PPP) projects are characterised by highly leveraged capital structure. Lenders who provide the major portion of financing in the form of debt are more concerned with the downside risks and the measures to mitigate the risks. Lenders, thus, look into the risk factors and mitigating measures that could influence the projects debt servicing capability while making the credit decisions. The purpose of this paper is to identify the various aspects of PPP road projects that lenders look into while making the decisions to extend project finance loans to PPP road projects.

Case study research with four Indian lending institutions provides primary evidences from the interviews on the aspects considered during credit decision making. The primary evidences are collaborated with secondary evidences such as loan proposal and information memoranda of the PPP road projects undertaken by the case study organisations.

The study identifies the various aspects of PPP road projects, categorised into six major dimensions. The aspects and dimensions provide a theoretical framework to measure the risk profile of PPP road projects from debt‐financing perspective.

Additional cases can be undertaken to validate the findings and increase the usefulness of the framework to practitioners and enhance their general application.

The framework can be useful while making debt financing decisions in assessing how desirable the project is from a debt‐financing perspective.

The work is novel providing insights into debt financing of PPP road projects in India and will be of interest to sponsors while structuring the financial package.

Relocation of utilities is a major source of delay in Indian infrastructure projects. This delay is particularly critical in road and bridge construction projects. The purpose of this paper is to identify the various factors and also the interrelationships between the factors which influence the delays in the relocation of utilities.

Case studies were conducted on 11 road and bridge projects in India with varying levels of complexity and size. Factors causing relocation delays were identified using computer aided qualitative analysis methodology. Cognitive mapping technique was used to map the interrelationships between the factors and to identify the critical delay factors.

Factors affecting delays were identified across two groups, namely, technical and organizational factors. The study offers insights into the kinds of interactions of factors that can lead to delays in a project. The critical factors causing delays were identified as slow response from utility agencies, difficulty in identification of underground utilities, lack of information on underground utilities and conflict between agencies.

The limitations of the study are that the interview respondents are not evenly distributed among the type of organizations which may have induced some bias in responses. The impact of the utility relocation delays on the overall project delay has to be detailed further.

The interrelationships between factors has the potential to help the officials of highway department, contractors, utility agencies and others understand how various interactions/linkages of factors contributes to delays in utility relocations. Recommendations are provided for the practical use and to reduce the impact of delays.

Utility relocation has received very little attention in the extant literature and this paper seeks to contribute to knowledge in this area by identifying the linkages between factors and the critical factors of utility relocation delays in India.

Stakeholder assessment is based on attributes possessed by stakeholders, making the process heavily reliant on evaluating attribute weights. The present assessment methods are based on Analytical Hierarchy Process, Analytical Network Process, and pairwise comparisons that heavily rely on decision-makers’ skills and knowledge. An objective evaluation of attribute weight needs to be done to overcome this challenge.

A Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) based approach, through the combined use of Criteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) methods has been incorporated to objectively evaluate the weights of the stakeholder attributes and their ranking with a specific focus on construction megaprojects. Five stakeholder attributes and twelve commonly associated stakeholders with megaprojects were considered to achieve this.

The new model presented power, durability and legitimacy as three important stakeholder attributes, further used to determine stakeholder importance. The client, contractor and project manager were identified as the top three internal stakeholders, and customers, local community and utility service providers as three crucial external stakeholders.

The findings from the proposed method provide the practitioners with updated information about the attributes they need to look into when planning stakeholder involvement and management. Further, it also leads them to the established framework for the provided stakeholder ranking when planning their management strategies.

The use of CRITIC method allowed to address the possibility of any correlation between the attributes in their weight determination. This was one of the advantages as co-relation between the attributes during their weight determination has not been addressed in previous methods.