An Assessment of Project Management Practice and Performance : In the Case of Construction Projects in Sebeta Town
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2022-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements. The escalating resource constraints faced by organizations require the implementation of project management methods that will maximize the proportion of successful projects. Therefore this study is aimed to assess the project management practice and performance in the case of construction projects in Sebeta town from the perspectives of four project life cycles. To achieve its objectives, the study uses a descriptive and explanatory research design and primary data were used. A questionnaire was a mechanism used to collect data from 31 project staffs. The data was analyzed by obtaining the means and standard deviations. As a result, the findings revealed a moderate level of project planning, execution, and closing practice. The correlation analysis was employed mainly to assess if there is significant degree of association between the project management practices and project performance. The result indicates that all project management practices have positive relationship with project performance. Using multiple linear regressions, the explanatory variables were checked whether they are significantly explaining the dependent variable (performance) or not and also to check whether independent variables have positive or negative relationship with the dependent variable(project performance). The result indicates that project closure and initiation have positive and significant relationship with project performance while project planning has significant negative relationship. Project execution has insignificant negative relationship with project performance. From the findings, the study concludes that there is an inefficiency of project management practices followed within construction projects, and these practices could be graded as moderate with respect to best practices. Finally though the project was not completed with the planned budget and schedule, it was good in achieving the expected quality, objective and goal. Based on this the study proposes: Sebeta project office should develop a culture of developing appropriate risk plans and risk response controls, to prevent unexpected risks and failures, it should also develop a strong culture of lessons learned documentation at every project performed by the organization, Short term project management methodologies should be given to project office staffs.
Key words: Construction project, Project Management practice, Project performance