FACTORS AFFECTING CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS’ PERFORMANCE: A CASE STUDY OF ADAMA CITY COBBLESTONE ROAD CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS

Abstract

Cobblestone road creation has become one of the most successful infrastructure and job creation program in the country, with tremendous benefits for the urban poor. The main objective of this study was to assess factors affecting the construction projects performance in the case of Adama city cobblestone construction projects. The study was done in Adama city Cobblestone construction project that was under taken for the years of 2012 to 2014 E.C. Both primary and secondary sources were employed, where Project managers, consultants, foremen and employees were used as primary sources and documents from municipality was collected as secondary sources. From a total of 617 population, a sample of 121 was selected using simple random sampling. Relative Ranking Index was used to analyze the factors and chose the most influential factors. The most influential project management related factors that were ranked top two were awarding of the contractor to the lowest bidder with RII equals 0.890 and lack of project management experience with RII equals 0.818, which show that the project management experience was the crucial point in the maintaining the performance of the project. The effective scheduling and planning should be practiced; successful monitoring and evaluation should be done. Extending construction of the cobblestone in the areas appropriate for their durability in order to keep up their quality is mandatory. Critical evaluation of contractor before granting the contract to low-cost bidders since it has negative impact on the completion of the project, result in cost overrun and the substandard project quality. Further study should be conducted in the factors affecting project performance in the construction industries.