PhD Final Thesis April 2013.pdf - Anglia Ruskin Research Online

Thesis Keith Gale 2013professional and managerial officers, suppliers, sub-contractors and the generalpublic. In addition, a public sector client organisation has to account for expenditureand selection of suppliers in accordance with statutory and European legislation.Contextual positioning of a construction project for a private sector organisation isset within a different paradigm to that of a public sector organisation and this isreflected by determination of project success. Public sector paradigms reflect acultural awareness of public service and openness (Johnson et al, (2008), p75)whereas private sector organisations relate to commercial considerations andconfidentiality.Classification of project success has varied over time and this is especially so duringthe last five decades (Kerzner, 1998). In the 1960’s a project would be deemedsuccessful if ‘it worked’ – that is, fulfilled its prime functional objective. This singledescriptor of success expanded during the 1980’s into the familiar ‘iron triangle’outcomes of timescale, quality and cost ascribed by Atkinson (1999). If a projectfulfilled all three success factors, it would be described as extremely successfulwhereas two factors gained moderate success. Introduction of total qualitymanagement into construction operations during the 1990’s saw an expansion ofmeasurement of success by use of various metrics. These include the widerenvironment within which a project sits. In his review, Atkinson (1999) introducespost completion, stakeholder involvement, operational measures and the like, asother criteria to be considered toward success.7.3 Identification of critical success factorsAs a reaction against the growing number of metrics being suggested for projectperformance together with the extensive resources used in collection, a counterargument is suggested. Kerzner (2001) placed this focus back with the ‘iron triangle’but added secondary criteria such as minimising disruption to stakeholders, change tocorporate culture and the like. Yeung et al (2008) modified this concept further byidentifying seven key weighted indices (equivalent to critical success factors)aggregated to produce a single performance index that may be used to measure therelative success of projects. It is proposed to use this methodology to construct aproject success index from critical success factors to measure the relativeperformance of construction projects included within this research.125