Managing and Controlling Project Changes in Post Conflict Countries the Case of Liberia

Abstract

Ineffective change management and control practices in donor and government-funded projects served as the major impediment to meeting project completion timelines and possible project failures. Project management professionals globally have attributed multiple requests for cost, scope, or schedule changes to classical project management issues, including cost overruns, schedule overruns, and scope creeps when managing traditional-driven projects. In post-conflict countries, including Liberia, multiple change requests or variation orders are prevalent in various types of projects often driven by political interests, corruption, and other fraudulent practices. In this paper, the author examined some critical change management and control issues, especially regarding little or non-existent institutional framework for change control as well as the lack of a structural and systematic approach for managing and controlling changes during project implementation. To mitigate these situations, the author proffered recommendations aimed at helping project organizations minimize budget and schedule overruns due to scope creep as well as project delays resulting from unregulated change management and control practices in Liberia.