Gharouni Jafari, K and Noorzai, E (2021) Selecting the most appropriate project manager to improve the performance of the occupational groups in road construction projects in warm regions. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 147(10): 04021131, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
This research proposes a framework to determine the most appropriate project manager (PM) to enhance the performance of occupational groups (POGs) in large, medium, and small road construction projects in warm regions. The occupational groups (OGs) in road projects were divided into three categories: workers, technicians, and engineers. Using the Pareto principle, 14 critical project manager competencies (PMCs) were extracted from a 70-item list developed by performing a comprehensive literature review. Two indexes were ranked in each size of road project using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) technique: which OG's performance improves the most when the PMCs identified are implemented, and the importance of each PMC in improving the POGs. The results showed that in small projects, a PM with strong communication skills is needed to maximize the performance of all three OGs, whereas negotiation skills in medium projects and project management knowledge in large projects are the most critical PMCs that a PM should possess to increase engineers' performance. The findings can help road construction firms to select the most appropriate PM to improve the POGs for road projects by project size, eventually leading to project success. The principal distinction of this research is its investigation of the correlation between PMCs and the POGs across different road project sizes. The main limitation of this research is that the research scope was limited to warm zones.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | construction phase; decision-making; engineer; occupational groups; performance; project manager competencies; project size; road projects; technician; worker |
| Index terms: | literature review, road project, project success, communication skill, project management, engineer, small project, construction phase, negotiation, decision-making, project manager, road construction, investigation |
| Subjects: | project delivery, production management, profession, project management theory and practice, civil engineering, infrastructure engineering, conflict resolution, decision analysis, data collection methods, management, data analysis and analytics |
| Topics: | Project Management, Organizational Design, Stakeholder Management, Risk Management, Engineering Principles, Research Practice, Roles and Professions |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCA |
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