Exploring Critical Success Factors for Developing Infrastructure Projects in Malaysia – Main Contractors’ Perspective

Abstract

The construction industry needs to develop methodologies and techniques to better promote quality engineering and minimize losses. This study aims to identify the Critical Success Factors (CFSs) that contribute to the successful development of infrastructure projects in Malaysia and examine their possible impact on project objectives in scope, time, cost and quality. Main contractors are usually intensively involved in the development of infrastructure projects. However, there is limited research touching on main contractors' view on CSFs for infrastructure projects in Malaysia. Therefore, this study is carried out to explore this topic from the main contractors' perspective. Based on an extensive literature review, 33 candidate CSFs were identified and examined. Practitioners in selected companies that had been intensively involved in infrastructure development in Malaysia were invited to participate in a questionnaire survey. The questionnaire survey was designed to elicit professional opinions of those practitioners on the significance level and the impact on project objectives of the identified candidate CSFs. A significance index (SI) was calculated to show the significance level of the candidate CSFs. This explorative study has found that the majority of the 33 identified candidate CSFs were perceived to be of critical significance by the respondents. Some of them hold particular importance to achieving project management objectives in terms of scope, time, cost, and quality. The findings may be used as a checklist so as to increase the quality and success rate of future infrastructure projects in Malaysia. Research limitations and future directions are also discussed.

Modeling strategic performance factors for effective strategy execution

“…The categories of SPF were also presented ranging from hierarchy level vs group level to temporary vs ongoing and internal vs external. Different SPFs have been pointed out for different industries (Gadenne, 1998) such as information technology (Rai et al , 1996); tourism (Getz and Brown, 2006); construction (Jin et al , 2012); banking (Tser‐yieth, 1999), etc. The scholars also identified SPFs considering different management areas such as new product development (Cooper and Kleinschmidt, 1995); implementing Six Sigma projects (Ricardo and Antony, 2002); ERP implementation (Finney and Corbett, 2007); supply‐chain management (Power et al , 2001), etc.…”

Analysis of Critical Success Factors Influence on Critical Delays for Water Infrastructure Construction Projects in the Abu Dhabi emirate Using PLS-SEM Method

“…Further, Jin, Tan, Zuo and Feng (2012) described 'environment' as all external issues effects on the construction project process, including and not limited to social, political, and technical systems. The factors that can be grouped into these categories include economic environment, social environment, political environment, physical environment, industrial relation environment, and level of technology advanced (Jin et al, 2012).…”

“…However, according to Jin et al (2012), some of these externals influence the construction project at all phases of the project life cycle, such as weather conditions or the social environment. According to some researchers, these factors sometimes, have a considerable impact that they resulted in project termination at the construction stage (Jin et al, 2012;Yong and Mustaffa, 2013;Zhao et al, 2013;Gudienė et al, 2014).…”

The relationship between critical success factors and success criteria in construction projects in the United Arab Emirates

“…The study follows a survey design approach because it allows some statistical analysis to be performed to test the correlation and the effect between variables (Yin, 2009). In addition, questionnaire survey provides a cost effective method of collecting data (Jin et al, 2012). The questionnaire survey was constructed based on the findings of the literature review conducted on previous researches.…”