The effect of project management practices on building project performance: the case of three organizations
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Date
2009-08-08
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Abstract
Performance of building projects is affected by several factors. The focus here is on the relationship between Project Management Practices carried out by Project Management Organizations and project performance. Three organizations involved in the management of projects were thus selected as project management organizations for the study. These are ‘GETFund’ organization, ‘Common Fund’ organization and ‘SIF’ organization.
Three criteria for measuring project performance were identified for their widespread application in project management definition and general understanding amongst practitioners. These include: time, cost and quality criteria.
Semi-structured personal interviews have been carried out within the selected organizations for identification of practices undertaken in the management of building projects. Other significant project management practices were also captured in relevant literature. A structured questionnaire was developed to gather information for measurement of the project performance and determination of project management practices significantly relating to project performance. Performance indices were developed for measurement of the time, cost and quality performance. To test for significant differences between the performance of the categories of projects, each belonging to one organization, a pair-wise analysis, using independent t-tests, was used. Multiple Regression Analysis has been used to determine the relationship between the significant project management practices and project performance.
Considerably, significant difference between the time performance of the categories of projects was observed. There was significant cost performance difference of the categories of projects across all the organizations whilst there was no significant difference in quality performance across all the three pairs of categories of projects analyzed. It was realized that as significant difference exists between the performance of a given pair of categories of projects from organization to organization the corresponding significant project management practices also vary from organization to organization and vice versa.
(Keywords: building projects, project management organization, project management practices, project performance)
Description
A Thesis submitted to the Department of Building Technology,Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Construction Management.