Competency-based evaluation of project managers’ performance in mass house building projects in Ghana – the fuzzy set theory approach

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2013-08-27
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The fundamental concept on which project management is based is that a single individual-the project manager- is accountable for the success of the project. This involves project managers (PM) possessing a variety of skills relating to the standard objectives of project completion within a set specification, under time, cost and quality constraints. Admittedly, projects may fail due to external factors that are beyond the control of the project manager, however the competence of the project manager, "constitute a critical parameter among the many variables that directly affect the outcome of the project". Furthermore, PM competencies have been identified to be project specific and the relative importance of success criteria differs significantly over the various phases of the project lifecycle. Subsequently, seven (7) key competency profiles have been developed for the management of mass house building projects in a previous study. However, there is no empirical understanding of how these competencies are being used in practice towards entrenching the reliability and validity of the seven (7) core competencies, especially where human decisions are involved. Therefore, the main aim of this study is to establish a method for evaluating the performance of a PM in mass house building projects based on the seven (7) core competencies as defined by senior managers. Subsequently, a structured interview was conducted to elicit the views of senior managers regarding the antecedents or measure indicators (MIs) to the seven (7) key competency factors (KCFs) required in mass house building projects (MHBPs). Due to ill-defined and ambiguous nature of the competencies required in MHBPs, appropriate qualitative and linguistic terms were developed for senior managers to rate the performance of their PM handling a current project. The data was taken through fuzzy arithmetic and results showed that the level of performance of the PM in the eyes of senior managers was average. The study confirmed an earlier finding that the performance of PMs in Ghana is average. Industrial contributions of the study involve developing a model that provides insight in to and sub-themes to the seven (7) key competencies that engender superior performance in MHBPs. The fuzzy technique used in this research has proven to be a useful tool for evaluation of competencies, which are quite difficult to measure and quantify in our present situation and with the existing tools in the construction industry if any.
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A thesis submitted to the Department of Building Technology, College of Architecture and Planning, in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of Master of Science (MSc) in Construction Management,
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