An Integrated Model for Auditing Construction Projects - a Case Study of Oil and Gas Projects in Iran
Creators: name: Teymouri, Ahmad
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2015
Subjects: Project Audit
Project Management
Construction Management
Construction Project

description: Nowadays, organizations implement projects for many purposes. Using the project as a strategic success factor for project-oriented companies is continuously increasing. However, most of the time, the results are not the same as planned. Some projects fail to achieve their objectives; others are canceled, whereas on some other cases, companies have to re-plan their strategy. Project-oriented companies know that maintaining an ideal and logical balance between the project’s time, cost, and quality constraints can vastly guaranty project success. Therefore, they should switch from traditional project management to modern and advanced project management methodology, which improves project performance and efficiency over its life cycle. One of the most applicable tools used to assess and monitor project performance and thus finding the associated issues is Project Audit, which is a comprehensive and organized assessment of the effectiveness and efficiency of project performance, management, and compliance. In this research, an integrated project audit model is presented that incorporates a detailed design module, which shows the structure of the model, questionnaire module, and a scoring module. The model is developed as an integrated project audit application where the user is easily able to select, plan, implement, and report a project audit. The model’s output consists of two parts: 1) a comprehensive report that shows the project situation in five main project processes and nine project functions. This report presents the project’s score in a specific function and its related process (i.e., planning cost or closing procurement); 2) useful analytical reports and graphs of the project performance. In this part, the model compares the project’s planned and actual time and cost, calculates their variances, and forecasts the final cost and time based on the current performance. The model is validated by using an actual Oil and Gas project to test its workability and capabilities. Three groups will benefit from this model; 1) owners; 2) project managers and project team; 3) general contractors and construction companies. The model helps project owners to identify problems early on and reduce project waste in terms of time, effort, material and costs. Moreover, it provides owners the opportunity to identify the project performance from the cost and time constraints. Also, after using this model, project managers and project team have a list of findings that need to be addressed to enhance the overall project performance. The various reports of the model not only provide detail information about project constraints (time, cost, and quality) but it also present valuable analysis related to other aspect of the project (i.e. risk, scope, and communication) which are very useful for the project team. Furthermore, the developed lessons learned from the project can be documented with this model, which is very useful for general contractors and construction companies in future projects.