Assessing construction project performance in Ghana : modelling practitioners' and clients perspectives

Several countries at various levels of socio-economic development have recognised the need and importance of taking measures to improve the performance of their construction industry. One of the means to this end has been to ensure performance efficiency in construction project execution. As has been widely acknowledged, this requires a deliberate process of continuously monitoring the performance of projects based on relevant indicators. To this end, several models have been proposed in literature assess projects under the broad headings of critical success factors and key performance indicators. However, these objectives are faced with several drawbacks. These has to do with the difficulty in developing a realistic and agreed set of indicators due to the very nature of the industry; the number of indicators necessary to be a complete picture, and lend relevance and accuracy to the overall result will be very large; the difficulty in collecting and processing the required raw data for estimating the indicators, especially in developing countries; and the need to amend or adapt these criteria and indicators for each country and, even project situation due to the dynamic nature of the factors in operation in the construction industry. At the core of these problems is the fact that most of the existing models emphasise the use of lagging measures instead of leading measures. Worse, they do not emphasise continuous assessment of the project, and finally, these models do not pay attention to needs of the clients as initiators of the project. This research purposed to pre-empt the need for undertaking construction project performance in Ghana based on relevant indicators, as a means of helping to bring about improvements in project executions. Focusing on Ghana, a developing country, this thesis aims at providing a framework within which the industry can learn from best practices elsewhere. Specifically, this thesis provides a means by which construction project performance could be continuously assessed with measures that reflect the perspectives of both practitioners and clients. It also takes into consideration the particular circumstances of the project. In addressing the problems, it was necessary to work within a paradigm shift in the following regard: (i) moving away from expecting "project autopsy reports" towards "project health reports" (ii) moving away from the considering the outcomes of a project in terms ofsuccess/failure ichotomy into project performance results in identifiable criteria (iii) acknowledging the uniqueness of every project and the contingency factors which calls for contingency measures of assessment. Further, this thesis adopted the concept of the project as a ‘temporary organization’. This enabled the adoptions of the relevant organisational theories and improved practices from the business world into the project situation. Finally, the clients’ perspective of project performance was considered. Thus, the research builds on the existing performance measurement frameworks (including success/failure measurements) to develop a contingency- based model for assessing construction projects in Ghana, using multiple measures. Undertaking three sets of empirical research in Ghana within a space of eighteen months with practitioners and clients simultaneously, it was possible to determine the measures that currently reflect practitioners’ views on project performance on one hand and those of the clients on the other. Together, the thesis showed how these measures represent a shared perspective of project performance in Ghana. Based on the above results, a contingency-based assessment tool was designed which could be used to assess construction project performance throughout its life cycle. This tool will allow the identification of factors at play and provides information that will facilitate project management decision. Above all, the tool documents all relevant occurrences and documentations of challenges and decisions which is invaluable for learning and improvements both on the current project and for future projects.