Project Management Development – Practice and Perspectives

Fifth International Scientific Conference on Project Management in the Baltic Countries

April 14-15, 2016, Riga, University of Latvia

CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS FOR THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

Zakari Tsiga48, Michael Emes, Alan Smith

University College London, Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UK.

Abstract
This study aims to identify the critical success factors for projects in the construction industry. A
list of factors were identified from the existing literature and grouped into categories. The authors added
project risk management and requirements management to the list of categories to test the hypothesis that
these should also be considered as critical success factors in the construction industry. The study
identified 58 success factors classified into 11 groups, which were tested using an elicitation technique.
Forty-nine responses were collected from project managers, who had an average or 15 years of project
management experience and had participated in more than 15 projects. Once the data was collected, the
authors adopted the use of the relative importance index to rank the categories. From the results, the top
five most important are (1) Project Organization, (2) Project Manager Competence, (3) Project Risk
Management, (4) Project Team Competence and (5) Requirements Management. This lead to the
conclusion that both project risk management and requirements management should be considered as
critical success factors. Further analysis of the data highlights the importance of scope management and
soft skills in Requirements Management and Project Risk Management respectively.

Keywords: Construction Projects; Critical Success Factors; Project Risk Management; Project Success;
Requirements Management.
JEL codes: D20, L10, M19

Introduction
The Construction industry is one of the main sectors of the economy; it consists of the
entire process from project visualization to demolition of buildings and infrastructure. As a
service industry it is interlinked with various industries. The importance of the construction
industry can be seen throughout history and in the development of economies. According to the
World Market Intelligence (2010) the construction industry employs more people than any other
single industry in the world. The report by Global Construction Perspectives and Oxford
Economics (2013) suggest that the sector is globally expected to rise by $6.3 trillion or over 70
% to $15 trillion by 2025 compared to $8.7 trillion in 2012. The construction industry
incorporates all civil engineering projects such as building projects as well as the maintenance
and repair of existing constructed projects.
As the industry is constantly growing, newer and bigger projects are always undertaken
(Chan & Chan, 2004). These new undertakings generally come with more complexities as
boundaries are being pushed. An example of such large project currently being undertaking is
the Saadiyat Island project in Abu Dhabi, UAE with an estimated budget cost of $26 billion
(Ponzini, 2011).
Project success is the end deliverable of every undertaken project. Project success has
been a subject of debate (Alexandrova & Ivanova, 2012). In the construction sector various
efforts have been taken in other to determine these project success criteria because different

48
Corresponding author: Zakari Tsiga, E-mail address: zakari.tsiga.13@ucl.ac.uk.
Zakari Tsiga, Michael Emes, Alan Smith 363
 Project Management Development – Practice and Perspectives
Fifth International Scientific Conference on Project Management in the Baltic Countries
April 14-15, 2016, Riga, University of Latvia

stakeholders have different views and perception of a project this in itself can lead to various
views on project success.

Background
Project Success
In the past, research on project success focused on the achievement of the iron triangle
objectives (time, cost and quality) until recently researchers have identified the need to widen
the criteria for measuring project success (Atkinson, 1999; Wateridge, 1998). Researchers such
as de Wit (1988) emphasize that a project is considered successful if its stakeholders are
generally successful and the projects technical performance specification has been achieved.
Muller (2007) states that projects differ in a variety of ways such as size, uniqueness and
complexity this has lead researchers such as Westerveld (2003) to state that the criteria for
measuring project success should vary from project to project and hence it would be difficult to
have a unique set of criteria for all projects in all industries.

Critical Success Factors

The identification and careful consideration of critical success factors can have a positive
outcome on a project. New participants in the construction industry and also established
companies can use these factors to easily help themselves in better project delivery for future
projects (Bullen & Rockart, 1981).
Rockart (1982) define critical success factors as “those key areas of activity in which
favorable results are absolutely necessary for a manager to reach his/her goals”. Researcher such
as Futrell et al (2001) agree with the above stated definition as they believe critical success
factors are those factors in a project that can lead to a positive achievement of stakeholder
expectations and requirements. Boynton & Zmud (1984) goes to the extent of stating that the
achievement of CSFs in projects ensures positive outcome.
Critical success factors have been used in a wide variety of projects in different sectors
such as information technology (Almajed & Mayhew, 2014), Petroleum (Tsiga et al., 2016 ),
Space (Tsiga et al., 2016) as well as for generic projects (Muller & Jugdev, 2012; Pinto &
Prescott, 1988). A review of the literature by Tsiga et al. (2016) identified the critical success
factors and their corresponding categories as shown in Table 1.
Table 1
Critical success factors and categories
Category Critical Success Factors Sources
External Economic environment, social environment, (Gudiene et al., 2014);
Challenge political environment, physical environment and (Omran et al., 2012);
regulatory/legal environment. (Tan & Ghazali, 2011)
Client Nature of finance, experience, organization size, (Gudiene et al., 2014);
knowledge and emphasis on cots quality and time, ability to brief, (The Standish Group,
experience decision making, roles and contribution, 2013); (Omran et al.,
expectations and commitment, involvement and 2012)
influence.
Top Support given to project head, support to critical (Ram & Corkindale,
management activities, understanding of project difficulty and 2014); (Varajao et al.,
support stakeholder influence. 2014); (Almajed &
Mayhew, 2014).
Institutional Standards and permits. (Gudiene et al., 2014);
364 Zakari Tsiga, Michael Emes, Alan Smith
 Project Management Development – Practice and Perspectives
Fifth International Scientific Conference on Project Management in the Baltic Countries
April 14-15, 2016, Riga, University of Latvia

factors
Project Project type, size, nature, complexity, design, (Yong & Mustaffa,
characteristics resources allocation time and level of technology. 2013); (Omran et al.,
2012).
Project Experience, coordinating and motivating skills, (Toor & Ogunlana,
manager leading skills, communication and feedback, 2009); (Malach-Pines et
competence management skills, conflict resolution skills and al., 2009); (Barclay &
organizing skills. Osei-Bryson, 2009).
Project Planning and control effort, team structure and (Gudiene et al., 2014);
organization integration, safety and quality program, schedule (Varajao et al., 2014);
and work definition, budgeting and control of (Berssaneti & Carvalho,
subcontractors. 2015).
Contractual Contract type, tendering (procedures or steps for (Yong & Mustaffa,
aspects the selection of that service) and procurement 2013); (Omran et al.,
(company selection to provide services) process. 2012); (Tan & Ghazali,
2011); (Chan et al.,
2004).
Project team Team experience, technical skills, planning and (Gudiene et al., 2014);
competence organizing skills, commitment and involvement, (Varajao et al., 2014);
teams adaptability to changing requirements, (Almajed & Mayhew,
working relationships, educational level, training 2014); (Ram &
availability and decision making effectiveness. Corkindale, 2014).
Project Risk The factors under project risk management are sub (Almajed & Mayhew,
Management divided into two which are firstly hard aspects 2014), (Rabechini Junior
with initiation, identification, assessment, & Monteiro de Carvalho,
response planning, response implementation and 2013), (Didraga, 2013),
secondly, soft aspects of risk, which are risk
communication and attitude, monitoring and
review
Requirements Elicitation technique, identification, analysis and (Mirza et al., 2013)
Management negotiation, modelling, validation and scope (Didraga, 2013)
management
Source: (Tsiga et al., 2016)

Methods
There has already been some research performed on projects in the construction industry.
The first step taken in this research was to examine the already established CSFs from literature
and previous work. Projects such as the London Olympic Park (Davies & Mackenzie, 2013) and
the Sydney Opera House (Colbert, 2003) were carefully analysed before a standard set of
factors was obtained. The factors gotten where then categorised into 11.
Another strategy implemented in this research was to develop the questionnaire using the
key categories and factors identified and test them by asking professionals working in the
industry to provide us with their views. The implementation of the technique allowed the
authors to be able to analyse and quantify the data gotten from the respondents.
The data was analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software to
perform test such as the hypothesis test would be discussed in section 4.

Zakari Tsiga, Michael Emes, Alan Smith 365

 Project Management Development – Practice and Perspectives
Fifth International Scientific Conference on Project Management in the Baltic Countries
April 14-15, 2016, Riga, University of Latvia

Questionnaire Design
The survey consisted of 37 questions, which were then grouped into 5 different sections. The
first section contained background information of the respondents such as experience and
qualification. The next section had 11 questions that the respondents ranked based on a 10-point
scale. The third and fourth sections asked respondents to rank factors of project risk
management and requirements management also using the 10 point scale and the final section
consisted of only two questions aimed at asking respondent’s details of they wanted to be
contacted for further research and discussions.
After the questionnaire was designed before being distributed, a small pilot test was conducted
with potential participants to get feedback on possible improvements. The recommendations
gotten from the test was implemented to the design before final distribution.

Study Sample
The study was distributed online via email and business oriented social networking sites
LinkedIn, as such the participants are geographically located in different parts of the world with
diverse project experience in the construction industry. The total number of completed and valid
responses are obtained from the survey was 49.
Most respondents are currently project managers with master’s degrees, have an average
of more than 15 years’ project experience and also more than 15 years’ project management
experience.
They have participated in more than 15 projects with an average value of order of
magnitude 100 million $/€/£, delivering service projects and other categories of projects; they
are mostly geographically located in the United Kingdom, United States of America, Nigeria,
Australia and Canada.

Data Analysis and Findings

Relative Importance index
Relative importance index has been implemented in this study with the aim of it providing a
better understanding of individual predictors and their individual role amongst a given set
(Tonidandel & LeBreton, 2011). This method has been implemented in various project
management literature such as (Gudiene et al., 2013; Iyer & Jha, 2006). The formula for the
calculation is shown below:
(1)

M is the weight given to a factor by a respondent, in the range of 1 to 10. N is the highest
score available (10 in this case) and P is the total number of respondents that have answered the
question. The results of the relative importance index for the CSFs are shown in Table 2.
Table 2
Results of Relative Importance Index Calculation
Category RII Rank
Project Organization 0.892 1
Project Manager Competence 0.890 2
Project Risk Management 0.850 3
Project Team Competence 0.843 4
Requirements Management 0.827 5
Top Management Support 0.824 6
366 Zakari Tsiga, Michael Emes, Alan Smith
 Project Management Development – Practice and Perspectives
Fifth International Scientific Conference on Project Management in the Baltic Countries
April 14-15, 2016, Riga, University of Latvia

Contractual Aspects 0.806 7

Institutional factors 0.790 8
External Challenge 0.749 9
Client Knowledge and Experience 0.730 10
Project Characteristics 0.716 11
Source: Authors’ construction
Table 3
Results of Relative Importance Index Calculation on aspects of Project Risk Management
Project Risk Management RII Rank
Communication and culture 0.864 1
Initiation 0.853 2
Planning of Responses 0.834 3
Identification 0.823 4
Monitoring and Review 0.823 4
Implementation of responses 0.809 6
Assessment 0.760 7
Source: Authors’ construction
Table 4
Results of Relative Importance Index Calculation on aspects of Requirements
Management
Requirements Management RII Rank
Scope Management 0.883 1
Identification 0.867 2
Analysis and Negotiation 0.826 3
Validation 0.817 4
Modelling 0.770 5
Source: Authors’ construction

Reliability of Scale
Reliability of scale is used to “calculate the stability of a scale from the internal
consistency of an item by measuring the construct” (Santos, 1999). Nunnally & Bernstein
(1994) suggest that in order to ensure high reliability and internal consistency the value of the
Cronbach’s alpha for the construct should be grater that 0.7. Table 5 depicts the results of the
test on our study 47.
Table 5
Reliability of Scale Test Results
Constructs No of Items Cronbach’s Alpha
Critical Success Factors 11 0.864
Project Risk Management 7 0.812
Requirements Management 5 0.745
Source: Authors’ construction

Factor Analysis
Bartletts Sphericity is one of the methods used for factor analysis, here the constructs in the
study are considered viable and acceptable only if their individual factor loading is above 0.5

Zakari Tsiga, Michael Emes, Alan Smith 367

 Project Management Development – Practice and Perspectives
Fifth International Scientific Conference on Project Management in the Baltic Countries
April 14-15, 2016, Riga, University of Latvia

(Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007). In the case of this study all the questions had a factor loading of
above 0.5. This is considered to be good.

Hypothesis Test
In order to accept a hypothesis and reject the null hypothesis, certain conditions have to be
considered. The t-value should be > 2.0 and the p-value should be <0.05. Table 6 depicts the
results of the test, which means both hypotheses have been accepted as they meet the both
criteria’s.
Table 6
Hypothesis Test Result
Hypotheses t-value p-value (Sig) Outcome
H1: Project Risk Management 4.569 0.002 Accepted
H2: Requirements Management 2.051 0.008 Accepted
Source: Authors’ construction

Discussion
The first aim of this research is to determine if project risk management and requirements
management have an influence on project success in the construction industry. Once the data
was collected, a hypothesis test was carried out on the data, the results of the test as depicted in
Table 6 supports the relationship of project risk management to project success and
requirements management to project success which has led to the rejection of the null
hypothesis.
As both hypotheses have been accepted, it is important to also rank the factors against the
already established categories. To achieve this, the use of the relative importance index was
implemented for the ranking. From the results in Table 2, one can denote that the most
important factor is Project Organization. As Project Risk management and Requirement
management have not been previously included in the past literature it is a bit surprising to see
that Project Risk Management is regarded as the 3rd most important factor and Requirements
Management came in as 5th in the ranking. More research should be carried out as to ascertain
why so? Are they important for all projects in all sectors or only for the construction sector?
And why they haven’t been included as CSFs in previous research?
In the category of Project risk management, from the results shown in Table 3,
communication and culture is deemed to be the most important aspect of the category, which
showcases the importance of the soft side of risk management. Scope management is also
deemed to be the most important factor in requirements management as show cased in the
results in Table 4, this is known to have a cob web effect on the other factors in requirements
management.
The result of this study highlights areas to utilize scarce resources with the aim of
improving the chances of delivering better projects in the construction industry.

Conclusion
CSFs that can influence the outcome of projects have been an area of great discussion and
debate in project management; some studies have determined that CSFs are sector specific and
some factors play greater roles in some sectors. This study has identified 11 categories that have
been with 58 factors that have an impact on projects in the construction industry.

368 Zakari Tsiga, Michael Emes, Alan Smith

 Project Management Development – Practice and Perspectives
Fifth International Scientific Conference on Project Management in the Baltic Countries
April 14-15, 2016, Riga, University of Latvia

The 11 categories have been ranked based on their relative importance index calculated
from the data gotten. This research highlights the importance of requirements management and
project risk management in construction projects as both had a positive relationship with project
success and ranked higher than some already established categories.
The results of this research highlights the importance of more research should be carried out
in this area for better delivery of projects.

Acknowledgement
The authors of this paper would like to give a warm thanks to all those that participated and
helped during this study. Special thanks go to Mrs Jane Galbraith of the UCLs Statistical
Science department for her contribution towards the survey design and data analysis. A
noteworthy appreciation goes to the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) and the
Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC) for the financial support provided during the
research.

References
Alexandrova, M. & Ivanova, L., 2012. Critical success factors of project management: empirical ecidence
from projects supported by EU programmers. In Systematic Economic Crisis: Current issues and
persperctive. Skopje, 2012. The Internation ASECU Conference.
Almajed, A. & Mayhew, P., 2014. An empirical investigation of IT project success in developing
countries. IEEE, pp.984--990.
Atkinson, R., 1999. Project management: cost, time and quality, teo best guesses and a phenomenom, its
time ot accept other success criteria. International Jorunal of Project Management , pp.337-42.
Barclay, C. & Osei-Bryson, K.-M., 2009. Toward a more practical approach to evaluating programs: The
Multi-Objective Realization approach. Project Management Journal, pp.74-93.
Berssaneti, F.T. & Carvalho, M.M., 2015. Identification of variables that impact project success in
Brazilian companies. International Journal of Project Management, pp.638--649.
Boynton, A.C. & Zmud, R.W., 1984. An assessment of critical success factors. Sloan Management
Review (pre-1986), pp.17-27.
Bullen, C. & Rockart, J., 1981. A primer on critical success factors. Sloan School of Management.
Chan, A. & Chan, A.P., 2004. Key Performance indicators for measuring construction success..
Benchmarking: an international journal , pp.203-21.
Chan, A.P., Scott, D. & Chan, A.P., 2004. Factors affecting the success of a construction project. Journal
of construction engineering and management.
Colbert, F., 2003. Company Profile: The Sydney Opera House: An Australian Icon. International Journal
of Arts Management, 5(2), pp.69-77.
Davies, A. & Mackenzie, I., 2013. Project complexity and systems integration: Constructing the London
2012 Olympics and Paralympics Games. International Journal of Project Management, 32,
pp.773-90.
de Wit, A., 1988. Measurement of Project Success. International Journal of Project Management,
pp.164-70.
Didraga, O., 2013. The Role and the Effects of Risk Management in IT Projects Success. Informatica
Economica, pp.86-98.
Futrell, R.T., Shafer, L.I. & Shafer, D.F., 2001. Quality software project management. Prentice Hall PTR.
Global Construction Perspective and Oxford Economics, 2013. Global Construction 2025: A global
forcast for the construction industry to 2025.. London : Global Construction Perspective and
Oxford Economics.

Zakari Tsiga, Michael Emes, Alan Smith 369

 Project Management Development – Practice and Perspectives
Fifth International Scientific Conference on Project Management in the Baltic Countries
April 14-15, 2016, Riga, University of Latvia

Gudiene, N., Banaitis, A. & Banaitienne, N., 2013. Evaluation of critical success factors for construction
projects - an empirical study in Lithuania. International journal of strategic property management
, pp.21-31.
Gudiene, N., Banaitis, A., Podvezko, V. & Banaitiene, N., 2014. Identification and evaluation of the
critical success factors for construction projects in Lithuania: AHP approach. Journal of Civil
Engineering and Management, pp.350-59.
Iyer, K. & Jha, K., 2006. Factors affecting cost performance: evidence from Indian construction projects.
International journal of project management , pp.283-357.
Malach-Pines, A., Dvir, D. & Sadeh, A., 2009. Project manager-project (PM-P) fit and project success.
International Journal of Operations & Production Management, pp.268-91.
Mirza, M.N., Pourzolfaghar, Z. & Shahnazari, M., 2013. Significance of Scope in Project Success.
Procedia Technology, pp.722-29.
Muller, R.A., 2007. The influence of project managers on project success criteria and project success by
type of project. European Management Journal, pp.298-309.
Muller, R. & Jugdev, K., 2012. Critical success factors in projects. International Journal of Managing
Projects in Business.
Nunnally, J. & Bernstein, 1994. Psychometric theory.
Omran, A., Abdulbagei, M. & Gebril, A., 2012. An Evaluation of Critical Success Factors for
Construction Project in Libya. International Journal of Economic Behavior, pp.17-25.
Pinto, J.K. & Prescott, J.E., 1988. Variations in critical success factors over the stages in the project life
cycle. Journal of Management, pp.5-18.
Ponzini, D., 2011. Large scale development projects and the star architecture in the absence of democratic
politics: The case of Abu Dhabi, UAE. CITIES: The international journal of urban policy
andplanning. , 28(3), pp.251-59.
Rabechini Junior, R. & Monteiro de Carvalho, M., 2013. Understanding the Impact of Project Risk
Management on Project Performance: an Empirical Study. Journal of technology management and
innovation, p.6.
Ram, J. & Corkindale, D., 2014. How ``critical'' are the critical success factors (CSFs)? Examining the
role of CSFs for ERP. Business Process Management Journal, pp.151-74.
Rockart, J.F., 1982. The changing role of the information systems executive: a critical success factors
perspective. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Boston, p.2.
Santos, J.R.A., 1999. Cronbach's Alpha: A tool for assessing the relability of scales. Journal of extension ,
pp.1-5.
Tabachnick, B. & Fidell, L., 2007. Using multivariate statistics. Boston : Pearson.
Tan, D.J. & Ghazali, M., 2011. Critical success factors for malaysian contractors in international
construction projects using analytical hierarchy process. In International Conference on
Engineering, Project, and Production Management EPPM., 2011.
The Standish Group, 2013. Chaos Manifesto. Standish Group.
Tonidandel, S. & LeBreton, J.M., 2011. Relative importance analysis: A useful supplement to regression
analysis. Journal of Business and Psychology, pp.1-9.
Toor, S.-u.-R. & Ogunlana, S.O., 2009. Construction professionals' perception of critical success factors
for large-scale construction projects. Construction Innovation, pp.149-67.
Tsiga, Z., Emes, M. & Smith, A., 2016. Critical success factors for projects in the petroleaum industry.. In
The Second International Conference on Organizational Strategy, Business Models and Risk
Management.. Manchester, UK. , 2016. SDIWC.
Tsiga, Z., Emes, M. & Smith, A., 2016. Critical success factors for projects in the space sector. Journal of
Modern Project Mangement, pp.57-63.
Varajao, J., Dominguez, C., Ribeiro, P. & Paiva, A., 2014. Critical success aspects in project
management: similarities and differences between the construction and software industry.
Tehnivcki vjesnik, pp.583-89.

370 Zakari Tsiga, Michael Emes, Alan Smith

 Project Management Development – Practice and Perspectives
Fifth International Scientific Conference on Project Management in the Baltic Countries
April 14-15, 2016, Riga, University of Latvia

Wateridge, J., 1998. Hos IS/IT projects be measured for success? International Journal of Project
Management, pp.59-63.
Westerveld, E., 2003. The Project Excellence Model: Linking success criter and critical success factors..
International Journal of Project Management , pp.411-18.
World Market Intelligence, 2010. The Future of Global Construction to 2014. Market Intelligence Report.
Yong, Y.C. & Mustaffa, N.E., 2013. Critical success factors for Malaysian construction projects: an
empirical assessment. Construction Management and Economics, pp.959--978.

Zakari Tsiga, Michael Emes, Alan Smith 371