An Assessment of the Factors Leading to Projects Success/Failure in the Mauritian Building Construction Industry

Abstract

: The Mauritian building construction sector is the 3rd largest employer in the economy with around 46,300 employees, thus absorbing a large percentage of the working population with minimum level of education. However, in the Mauritian construction industry, the concept of project success/failure still remains unclearly defined. The well-known success criteria like time, cost and quality do not provide any practical information of achieving project objectives in an efficient way. Thus, it is very important for local building construction companies to understand the factors which make a project successful or a failure, if they want to progress in the highly competitive environment. The main aim of this research is to identify the major success/failure factor (and their interrelationship) from the 26 factors which were identified from project management literature. The survey was carried out among the major stakeholders of the Mauritian building construction industry through emails and social-medias. 37 responses were successfully received. From the analysis, primary and support areas of success/failure factors were identified and a framework was worked out so as to illustrate the factors which can increase project success in building construction. The most important success/failure factors are proper planning/scheduling, purchasing, contractor competences and other project management skills. Moreover, a clear interrelationship has been identified between primary and support areas of success/failure factors. Hence, from the developed framework and the interrelation matrix of project success/failure factors, major building construction project stakeholders in Mauritius can focus more on the primary factors to increase chances of project success.