Causes Of Project Failure Research Articles

Key requirements for achieving EU-wide programme change

Abstract Issue Across the world, thousands of projects aim for equitable improvement in health for people who are experiencing ongoing avoidable stigma, discrimination and disadvantage however very little change is often achieved. Description of the problem In this presentation we explore key requirements for project-level change to ensure EU-wide programme change is achieved. Results The two most common causes of project failure are a) the innovation is not suitable, needed or wanted (also called theory failure) or b) implementation failure. This presentation shares strategies to mitigate risks of project failure through co-design processes and communication, drawing from 30 years of experience from the entire implementation process from ideation to scale up. These experiences include projects from over 30 countries, including partnerships with the World Health Organization, governments and industry focused on health literacy, self-management, care pathways, workplace health, hospital services redesign, First Nations health and migrant health. Common success factors include balancing top-down needs with co-designed inputs and with previous preferred or good practice (which may have come from controlled trial evidence generated in different contexts). The intervention must co-implemented to serve stakeholder’s needs at all levels, from citizens to decision makers. Lessons The United Nations (UN) and private sector apply system-wide approaches to affect large scale change. This knowledge is valuable for large public health programmes aiming to integrate equity and diversity in project processes to minimize implementation failure.

A Fuzzy Logic Application to Manage Construction-Cost Escalation

In large-scale projects, such as transport infrastructures, the cost-planning phase stands out as one of the most crucial for the project’s success. Cost and time overruns, during the construction phase, are often the cause of project failure. A meticulous, conscious, and accurate ex-ante analysis of cost and time assessment can greatly contribute to the efficient and effective completion of a project. Various approaches have been developed to estimate and mitigate cost overruns. Such mitigation is subject to careful analysis of project risks, encompassing construction, environmental, social acceptance, and market risks. In this contribution, we propose the implementation of the risk-assessment tool, suggested by the National Anti-Corruption Authority (ANAC), using fuzzy logic to enhance its effectiveness. Thanks to the implementation of fuzzy prioritizations, the risk matrix and the associated risk levels, which are obtained by combining the event’s probability of occurrence and its expected impact on costs, have been clearly and structurally defined. This tool can facilitate risk ranking and, therefore, the implementation of their management strategies during the design and construction phases as well as the consensus-creation process. This application can therefore be used by public authorities as a transparent and manageable tool to assess expected risk during the design and implementation phases of the project.

Analysis of Risk Factors Affecting Road Work Construction Failure in Sigi District

One of the causes of project failure is work risks that often occur at work locations. The aim of this research is what risk factors influence road work in Sigi Regency and what indicators have an important role in influencing roads in Sigi Regency. The 50 respondents in this study included expert staff and service supervisors, consultants and contractors. Data analysis uses Factor Analysis. The Planning and Conflict Management factor is the factor that has the highest variance value when compared to other factors, namely 26.323%, which makes this factor a risk factor with a greater influence on road work in Sigi Regency compared to other factors. Indicators that have an important role in the risk factors that influence road work in Sigi Regency are changes in the contents of documents while the contract is running, inaccurate project evaluations in terms of time and duration, changes in government policy, increases in tax prices while the work is in progress, and By not following the provisions according to the contract.

Using extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) machine learning to predict construction cost overruns

Continuously, cost overruns in construction projects, as a leading cause of project failure, have been attracting more and more attention among construction stakeholders. Notably, cost overrun prediction model development can help identify factors that lead to cost overruns, thereby substantially improving cost estimates. Meanwhile, a machine learning application on archival data to estimate construction cost overrun is still in development. Motivated by this, we applied an Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) machine to analyze historical data of construction projects in Ghana completed between 2016 and 2018. The comparison between the actual and predicted cost yielded a good model prediction. The RMSE, MSE, MAE, and MAPE values are 0.202, 0.041, 0.069, and 0.306, respectively. To visually explain the importance of each feature for cost overrun prediction, we used SHAP values to illustrate the effect of each feature for model interpretability. According to SHAP ranking, we discover that the initial contract amount, the number of storeys, scope changes, and the initial duration are the variables that most accurately predict project completion costs and cost overruns. This research explores an innovative way to understand and evaluate essential variables that can help develop a prediction model of cost overruns that could aid the construction industry’s cost estimation.

Construction Project Failure and Abandonment in Kaduna State, Nigeria: An Analysis of the Causes Using the Relative Importance Index

The construction industry serves as one of the key players of a nation's economic growth, considering its role in infrastructural development, revenue generation, provision of jobs and shelter for the masses, enriching the esthetical view and influencing the growth of other key sectors of a nation. In this research, a study was carried out on the causes of construction project failures and abandonment in Kaduna state, Nigeria. The study’s objective was to identify the possible causes of failure and abandonment of construction projects and evaluate the identified causes in their order of importance. To achieve this, a quantitative research approach using questionnaires as an instrument for data collection in Kaduna state was adopted, using a total of One Hundred (100) survey-questionnaires distributed among professionals and workers in the construction industry. Analysis of the data acquired from the returned questionnaires was done using SPSS v26 and MS Excel 2016 to obtain the descriptive statistics and the Relative Importance Index (RII). From the ranking, Corruption (RII = 85.9%), Change in government administration (RII = 82.8%), Politics (RII = 82.8%), Government policies (RII = 81.9%) and Inadequate involvement of construction professionals (RII = 81.3%) were the five top ranking causes of project failure and abandonment in the study area. The Spearman rho correlation showed some significant but low relationship among the variables, while the Kruskal-Wallis test indicated the same distribution of all the variables among the construction professionals. The research also revealed that although insecurity was a burning issue for the industry especially in the study area, its ranking showed that it was not considered a significant factor in relation to the other factors.

Improving the evaluation of change requests using past cases

As one of the leading causes of project failures, requirements changes are inevitable in any software project. Hence, we propose an intelligent approach to facilitate the risk analysis of a change request by providing information about past cases found in similar change requests, the solutions adopted, and a support tool. The proposed approach uses case-based reasoning to retrieve previous cases similar to the current case. This approach also uses association rules to analyze patterns in the dataset and calculate the probability of risks associated with change requests. We prepared a case study to validate the proposal by analyzing the most frequent challenges in change management and considering how it can solve or minimize such problems. Results show that the proposed approach successfully assists decision-making, predicts potential risks, and suggests coherent solutions to the user. We have developed a support tool to evaluate this approach in practice with experts and obtained four different outcomes. Only a small set of cases failed to provide relevant results to the user. The use of case-based reasoning and association rules has proven to be advantageous in change management despite validity threats associated with the small number of test cases and experts involved.

Critical Coordination Factors Affecting Design and Build Projects

The design and build projects (DB) have increased in numbers in the last few decades. DB method is becoming more popular than the traditional method in Malaysia, especially in national projects.However, design-build projects may suffer from a significant number of problems, such as conflicts between the project parties (designers, contractors, and owners), resulting in poor performance and poor quality. One common cause of project failure of conventional projects is poor coordination and communication process. It has been found that no such study has been found to identify the coordination factors that might affect the project’s success. To fill this gap, this research aims to establish a framework of coordination factors affecting DB projects’ performance in Malaysia. This study uses a mixed methodology approach to identify critical coordination factors by a comprehensive review of the literature. The identified factors were categorized, ranked, and prioritized according to their influence on project performance using a quantitative approach. It is found that scheduling and planning, human resource coordination, documentation & records coordination, contract implementation coordination, value engineering and quality assurance, technical coordination, design coordination, management coordination, and external coordination are the significant factors of coordination that may affect the performance of construction projects. This study provides empirical evidence by correlating the identified coordination factors with DB project performance. Identification of coordination factors will help in enhancing and improving the performance of design and build projects.

Project Failure: A Bad Communication (Case Study)

The most common cause of project failure is miscommunication. It is most underrated and purposefully not deeply planned by most of the contractors, like Sujata, who become confused when changes and updates are not communicated correctly and on time. This ambiguity leads to errors, missed steps in the process, conflicts, and other problems. All these scenarios impacted the project, resulting in delays or budget overruns in the end. In this case, multiple stakeholder communications and changes in client requirements caused the project to fail and updates are not communicated correctly and on time. This ambiguity leads to errors, missed steps in the process, conflicts, and other issues. All these scenarios will result in delays or budget overruns in the end. In this case, multiple stakeholder communications and changes in client requirements caused the project to fail. As a result, internal conflicts will arise, with teams blaming each other for inefficiencies and poor deliverables. This case also entails the importance of stakeholder engagement at different levels of the project and the strategy to be implemented for stakeholder management. The goal of this case study is to draw attention to the difficulties that arise when small and medium-sized businesses fail to recognize the value of communication management in stakeholder engagement, which provided them success but were unable to account for the losses they suffered. This will enable them to account for the costs associated with change management involving stakeholder engagement.

Stakeholder perceptions on causes and effects of public project failures in Ghana

Factors responsible for the failure of most development projects are multifaceted. This study focused on unearthing the causes and effects of public project failure from the perspective of project stakeholders. Sixty stakeholders working on different public projects in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana completed a questionnaire. This study found that major causes of project failure were related to corruption, payment delays, procurement processes, planning, monitoring, bureaucracy, communication, and supervision. The perceived effects of project failure included revenue loss, discouraged investment, and unemployment. Project failure increased the initial cost of projects, impacted economic growth, led to the provision of substandard infrastructure and service relocation. Other effects of project failure were loss of capacity for public projects and emotional stress experienced by project stakeholders. The government of Ghana should adopt strategies to overcome corruption, bureaucracy, and unnecessary political influence. Finally, the government should cooperate with relevant stakeholders to implement measures geared towards improving the current system for procurement, supervision, monitoring, planning, and management practices.

No Project Should Ever Finish Late (and Why Yours Probably Will, Anyway)

Projects continue to offer a superior means for organizations to realize many advantages, including improving internal operations, achieving commercial success, and fostering greater society benefits. In spite of the enthusiasm with which projects are undertaken, in company after company, there is clear evidence of chronic under-performance, frustrating project managers, and making efforts to achieve success difficult. While there are a number of causes of poor project performance, one consistent theme running through under-performance is a failure to account for a variety of behavioral missteps. This article explores some of the reasons for consistent poor project results, particularly with schedule slippages, arguing that many of the causes of project failure are attributable to human error. In identifying some of the most common behavioral mistakes, this article explains the implications of these often well-meaning actions that can have a deleterious effect on project performance, including rework, Brooks’ Law, motivation behind padding activity duration estimates, the dangers of overtime, and more. Finally, we will consider suggestions for improving project delivery by recognizing and correcting behaviors that, through thought to remediate projects in difficulty, are actually exacerbating our challenges.

Feeling “holier than thou”: exploring the critical nexus between project governance, exploitative leadership and multi-dimensional success in ICT projects

PurposeProject managers are under a never-ending pressure to demonstrate the expected value of projects to the project sponsors; however, in most cases, project managers fail to realize this strategic value due to the loopholes left in project governance throughout various stages of the project life cycle. Furthermore, another root cause of project failure might be linked to an exceedingly self-interested project leader who is exploitative of his/her team. This is a recurring yet still unexplored aspect of destructive leadership that requires attention from the scientific community as well as practitioners. Hence, the present study explored the relationship between project governance and information and communication technology (ICT) project success, as well as the moderating effects of exploitative leadership on this relationship.Design/methodology/approachWith this aim, 357 responses were collected from project professionals in the emerging ICT industry in Pakistan, and the results were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) with partial least squares (PLS).FindingsThe findings provide new evidence that project governance significantly improves project success opportunities in the ICT industry; however, this relationship is negatively moderated by exploitative leadership.Originality/valueThe study findings extend the project leadership literature by uncovering the influence of the dark side of project leadership (i.e. exploitative leadership), in addition to revalidating the impact of project governance on project success through a multi-dimensional context.

Identifying Enablers and Obstacles for Knowledge Management in a Police Organization: Case Study of Abu Dhabi Police

Abstract Knowledge management and its effectiveness may be a potential catalyst for achieving project goals for optimum success and speed, or it may be a major cause of project failure when knowledge is inadequately managed. Recent scientific research has touched on the failure to facilitate the application of knowledge management mechanisms in all project phases due to the temporary status of projects as well as deficiencies in applying the concept of accountability among specialists. This paper reports on one element of a wider research project undertaken with Abu Dhabi Police to identify enablers and barriers to knowledge management in police projects. The research was qualitative in nature and focused directly on addressing mechanisms and methods of integrating management knowledge to improve project success and develop the capability of human capital in policing. The results of the research identified nine enablers that support successful knowledge management in policing projects: A policy for the management of knowledge, institutional leadership in support of open communication and motivation, highlighting the value of knowledge management, linking knowledge management content with job descriptions, establishment of specific channels for communicating with project stakeholders, adequate technology resources, communication systems to manage knowledge between teams in separate locations, enable social interaction to facilitate the process of knowledge management in daily operations, and apply processes for assessment and measurement in the use of social networks for knowledge management.

Global kelp forest restoration: past lessons, present status, and future directions.

ABSTRACTKelp forest ecosystems and their associated ecosystem services are declining around the world. In response, marine managers are working to restore and counteract these declines. Kelp restoration first started in the 1700s in Japan and since then has spread across the globe. Restoration efforts, however, have been largely disconnected, with varying methodologies trialled by different actors in different countries. Moreover, a small subset of these efforts are ‘afforestation’, which focuses on creating new kelp habitat, as opposed to restoring kelp where it previously existed. To distil lessons learned over the last 300 years of kelp restoration, we review the history of kelp restoration (including afforestation) around the world and synthesise the results of 259 documented restoration attempts spanning from 1957 to 2020, across 16 countries, five languages, and multiple user groups. Our results show that kelp restoration projects have increased in frequency, have employed 10 different methodologies and targeted 17 different kelp genera. Of these projects, the majority have been led by academics (62%), have been conducted at sizes of less than 1 ha (80%) and took place over time spans of less than 2 years. We show that projects are most successful when they are located near existing kelp forests. Further, disturbance events such as sea‐urchin grazing are identified as regular causes of project failure. Costs for restoration are historically high, averaging hundreds of thousands of dollars per hectare, therefore we explore avenues to reduce these costs and suggest financial and legal pathways for scaling up future restoration efforts. One key suggestion is the creation of a living database which serves as a platform for recording restoration projects, showcasing and/or re‐analysing existing data, and providing updated information. Our work establishes the groundwork to provide adaptive and relevant recommendations on best practices for kelp restoration projects today and into the future.

The Influence of the Human Factor on the Success of the Localization Project of the Automated Technological Line for Wood Production

The digital revolution has moved translation from the world of paper documents to the land of software, websites, multimedia and databases, giving rise to the concept of localization. The purpose of localization is a specific product that will look as if it was intended for a given target market, regardless of language, culture or country. The aim of the paper is to acquire an automated technological line for the cutting of large-area materials, especially chipboard and joints. The methods used were Stakeholder Analysis represented by a matrix structure in tabular form with a point scale ranging from 1 to 10. In order to implement project feedback and subsequent controlling, another method was used, namely the Traffic Light Method. Through the acquired knowledge and finding out the influence of the human factor on the success of the project, it was proved that the success of completing a local project depends mainly on the role and competencies of the project manager in cooperation with the powers of individual members of the project team. One of the main causes of project failure is inappropriate project management methods used, but also failure of human capital.

A Global Study Into the Reasons for Lean Six Sigma Project Failures: Key Findings and Directions for Further Research

A low success rate of improvement projects is one of the causes of the discontinuity of lean six sigma (LSS) initiatives in companies. It is essential to identify and evaluate the reasons why LSS improvement projects fail in order to enable LSS, Lean, and six sigma sustainability. This article presents the findings from a global survey conducted with 201 LSS experts around the world in both the service and manufacturing sectors. The results of this article point out the significant failure rates for LSS projects and alert that projects had higher termination rates in the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">measure</i> and <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">analyze</i> phases [define, measure, analyze, improve, and control (DMAIC)]. Failures occur primarily at the corporate level. The main causes of project failures identified were the lack of commitment by top management, resistance to change, inadequate rewards and recognition mechanisms, inconsistent monitoring and control of the projects, and poor communication. This article shows that there are some minor differences in terms of ranking of these factors between the manufacturing and service sectors, but there is a significant difference in terms of continent and belt level (master black belts, black belts, and green belts).

Sustainable Location Selection for Investing in Public–Private Partnership Infrastructure Projects: From a Developing Country’s Perspective

Location selection is one of the most important aspects of feasibility studies in all types of businesses and construction fields. However, poor project location selection is one of the leading causes of project failure, adversely affecting the cost, schedule, and other benefits of investors. This paper proposes an evaluation framework for selecting a sustainable location for investing in public–private partnership (PPP) infrastructure projects in Vietnam. Nine success criteria are identified via a literature review and expert judgments. Then, the fuzzy technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method is applied to compute the success index and rank three alternatives: Southern (A1), Northern (A2), and Mekong Delta (A3) regions. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is conducted to examine the certainty and effectiveness of the model. The result indicates that alternative A1 is the best location for investing in the PPP form with a closeness coefficient (CCi) value of 0.555 and a sensitivity ratio of 11/13. This finding obtained using the proposed framework may be a helpful reference for practitioners and investors in selecting a sustainable location for PPP investment in Vietnam as well as other developing countries.

Government project failure in developing countries: A review with particular reference to Nigeria

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Evaluation of the impact of risk management on project performance in small construction firms in South Africa

PurposeRisk management has become an integral part in businesses around the world. In the construction industry, risk management has also been introduced and has been mainly entrusted in the hands of the project team to go through a laid down risk management processes to identify possible risk events, which may occur during the project execution and the impact they may have on the project deliverables should they occur. It is, however, believed that small construction firms do not take risk management as a serious exercise even though most of the project risks are transferred to them as subcontractors. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to investigate risk management processes in the small construction companies and the impact of risk management on their project deliverables.Design/methodology/approachA case study of a single construction company was used for this study. Data were collected through structured questionnaire to 16 respondents who are involved in the project execution in the case study company. Two managing directors of the case study company were also interviewed. In total, 11 project site meetings were also attended to observe meeting proceedings and to record issues discussed. In total, 15 monthly project reports and project close-out reports were also studied. In total, One hundred and five completed projects of which 58 per cent were renovation projects, 27 per cent were new projects and 15 per cent were civil/structural works were also examined. The data were then analysed using excel analytical tool and the content analysis method.FindingsThe findings indicate that small construction companies with respect to the case study company do not have a specific laid down risk management processes that project team are made to go through before and during the execution of their projects. There is, however, no conclusive evidence regarding the impact of risk management on project performance as a significant number of projects done were able to meet a successful project performance indicators even though risk management exercises were not done. Some of the identified risk events that caused project failures are payment delays, labour related issues, subcontractor/main contractor related issues, insufficient contingency reserves/plan, etc.Research limitations/implicationsOnly one construction company was used as a case study for this research and all sources of data were related to a single company. The results may, therefore, be not generalisable.Practical implicationsThe research has discovered that projects outcome could have improved tremendously if proper risk management exercises were implemented before project execution as most of the causes of project failures could have been identified through the risk management processes. This study, hence, gives an insight as to why small construction firms like the case study company should take risk management seriously in their projects execution to improve on the performance of their projects.Originality/valueThe research has discovered that projects outcome could have improved tremendously if proper risk management exercises were implemented before project execution as most of the causes of project failures could have been identified through the risk management processes. This study, hence, gives an insight as to why small construction firms like the case study company should take risk management seriously in their projects execution to improve on the performance of their projects.

Learning from published project failures in conservation

Conservation professionals need to know what has worked and what has not when designing, implementing, evaluating and refining conservation projects. Project failure reporting is an important, but largely unexploited, source of learning that capitalizes on the learning opportunity of failure provided through the experience of navigating research-implementation ‘spaces’. Learning from others through reading available literature is one way to supplement learning gained through direct experience. Learning vicariously is especially effective when presenting failure as opposed to success experiences. We reviewed the peer-reviewed conservation science literature to identify the extent and characteristics of failed project reporting, focusing our analysis upon social dimensions as opposed to biological causes, which have been comparatively well addressed. We quantified the degree to which articles reported activities commonly applied to learn from failure in business, medicine, the military and commercial aviation. These included activities for identifying, analyzing, correcting and sharing project failures. We used qualitative thematic analysis to identify the social causes of project failure. Reports of failed project experiences are rare and lack standardization. Human dimensions of project failure, such as stakeholder relationships, are more commonly reported than other causes of failure. The peer-reviewed literature has the potential to become a useful repository of lessons learned from failed projects. However, practical challenges such as identifying individuals' cognitive biases, cultivating psychological safety in teams, mainstreaming systemic team learning behaviors, addressing varied leadership styles, and confronting fear of failure in organizational culture must be overcome if conservation professionals are to effectively navigate research-implementation ‘spaces’.

Risks Associated with Road Infrastructure Project Financing in Developing Countries: Study of Selected PPP Road Projects in Lagos, Nigeria

Several World Bank reports on the infrastructure situation in the emerging economies such as Nigeria have indicated that adequate infrastructure provision is not only critical but inevitable for any meaningful economic development. This paper examines the risk factor which is a major impediment to infrastructure project financing. In Lagos, several PPP road infrastructure projects have suffered setbacks at various stages. The Public – Private Partnership (PPP) scheme is now becoming one of the prevailing ways for infrastructure development in Lagos and although infrastructure investment have gained increasing investors attention over the past decades, the empirical evidence on their risk implications is still limited. The research is limited to Lagos since PPP arrangement in project financing/investment is still very low in Nigeria. Random sampling technique was applied. Data collection was by structured questionnaires, personal observations, interviews and phone surveys. Data analysis was based on simple descriptive analysis which employed statistical tools. The result of the research identifies and categorizes the various risks into three main categories – financial, political and project performance risks. The result of this research further show the most common causes of project failures in Lagos PPP road infrastructure projects and also identifies the most critical investment risks in the sector. The paper further recommends the most responsive risk management framework and mitigation measures for Lagos PPP road infrastructure projects. Conclusively, and given the relatively high risk perception associated with road infrastructure investment in Lagos, it is of primary importance to carry out exhaustive risk identification, risk hedging/management reviews, and evaluation of risk mitigating instruments/measures before embarking on any road infrastructure project investment/finance.