Walker, G; Naoum, S and Howes, R (1997) Determinants of project management success. In: Stephenson, P (ed.) Proceedings of 13th Annual ARCOM Conference, 15-17 September 1997, Cambridge, UK.
Abstract
One of the features of the construction industry over the last two decades or so, has been the use of project management (PM) concept of building procurement. evidently, the PM approach has proved its success in certain types of projects. However, statistics show that a significant number of large publicly funded projects, which are managed under the PM concept, have overran on time, overran on cost and performed poorly on safety. This paper presents some findings of a PhD research which sought to identify the cuases of success and failure of the PM technique in railway engineering projects. It reports the preliminary results of the pilot study, which obtained the views of over 180 different client organisations, project managers, design consultants and contractors as to what determines project success. A survey questionnaire was designed with 46 factors, covered under four major sections, namely managerial, Organisational, Project Control and Project Systems. The initial analysios of the survey suggests that project management capabilities, cost estimation, work definition, client criteria and project objectives were among the highly rated factors that determine the success of PM projects. Future research will consist of measuring the performance of success criteria against 32 detailed case studies. The aim is to show the factors that are associated with outstanding, average and familiar projects.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | project management; determinant of project success |
| Index terms: | railway engineering, survey, client organization, building procurement, success criteria, project success, case study, project manager, cost estimating, determinant, construction industry, statistics, project management, project control, questionnaire |
| Subjects: | project management theory and practice, civil engineering, industry analysis, assessment methods, control systems, client relations, mathematical modelling, risk assessment, profession, data collection methods, financial and cost management, contractual arrangements |
| Topics: | Engineering Principles, Research Practice, Project Management, Cost Management, Procurement, Risk Management, Stakeholder Management, Roles and Professions |
| Descriptive scope: | 5 PCTEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here