Significant Factors Affecting Civil Engineering Project Performance

Abstract

Civil engineering projects trigger the economic growth by providing infrastructure facilities and job opportunities as well as attracting the attention of foreign investments. Due to their significant contributions toward the nation growth, the performance of civil engineering projects has become the upmost concern by the government. Unfortunately, many civil engineering projects in Malaysia are dominantly associated with unsatisfactory performance in terms of cost, time and quality of the delivered products. Therefore, this paper aims to identify the underlying causes which lead to unsatisfactory performance by determining the factors affecting civil engineering projects. The objective of this paper is to identify the civil engineering project characteristics and the quality of Standard Form of Contract (SFoC) adopted and the contractual behaviour of key participants of civil engineering project which affecting the performance. Questionnaires survey were conducted to undertake the research. 124 feedbacks received out of 300 questionnaires distributed to the G7 contractors registered under Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) and consultant engineer registered under Board of Engineers Malaysia (BEM). The data was statistically analysed using SPSS 21 and descriptive analysis was used for rank assessment of factors. It was found that the top three (3) most significant factors affecting civil engineering project performance are delay in making payment, environment uncertainty and the clarity of SFoC. These factors belong to three categories i.e the contractual behaviour of key participants, project characteristics and the quality of SFoC category. Thus, these categories are paramount to be put more concern on the performance of civil engineering projects in Malaysia.