Content area
Full text
INTRODUCTION
The use of terms like project management, construction management and other related terminology has certainly been on the rise in the construction and civil engineering industries in recent years. Post-graduate and crash courses in project management are a dime a dozen and every second person's business card sports a project management title. In an ideal world and ideal industry, this would be a good indication of how engineering projects are being managed. However, experience shows that this project management trend is not yet reflected adequately in actual projects. The Construction Business Owner magazine made reference to the BizMiner industry analysis report in May 2007 which reported that, of the 850 029 contractors that were operating in 2004 in the USA, only 649 602 were still operational in 2006, only two years later. The same article stated that 36.8% of construction businesses close down within one year. The USA's census data for the period 1989-2002 showed that the average failure rate of construction industry associated businesses is almost 2% higher than the average rate for all other industries. The article pinned all of this to poor project and risk management. A KPMG report in New Zealand (2010) stated, after a survey of 100 businesses across various industries, that 70% of them had suffered a complete project failure in the previous 12 months. In 2008 IBM surveyed 1 500 companies and found that only 40% of projects met schedule, budget and quality targets.
Many projects are still run in an ad hoc manner, with little regard for formal project management techniques. A disregard for project management as a formal discipline, which requires education and training, is still widespread. Contrary to widely accepted beliefs, lack of knowledge and skills has led and continues to lead to poor management of civil engineering and construction projects.
This is a problem affecting small and big projects alike, but the effects of poor project management are felt harder by smaller companies. Many of these smaller companies go under because of poor management of only a few projects, and this is further exacerbated by the fact that, unless the project manager had successfully managed a project in accordance with the classic principles of project management in the past, he is unlikely to...