Towards Appraisal and Improvement of Project Management Practices for Egyptian Construction Contractors

Abstract

Project Management has evolved and emerged by several organizations not only to gain competitive advantage; but also as a crucial factor that determines the success of the organization. In this regard, there is a global growing interest and attention for organizations to evaluate and improve the level of their project management practices. The past decade has shown a dramatic increase in the attention, research and practice of the project management maturity and the maturity models. These models are used to evaluate the current project management capabilities of an organization and to ensure its efficiency and uniformity in delivering projects successfully. Moreover, these models are used to further enhance the performance of organizations. Although the maturity models has evolved during the last decade as one of the tools for achieving project management excellence on the organization level; however, the excessive variety of maturity models has made the choice between those models difficult and need careful attention and consideration in both the model choice and its practical implementation in the business. For developed countries (such as USA, Canada, UK, Europe, etc…) several maturity models have been proposed and commonly implemented successfully. In Egypt, there is a lack of documentation available on the current status and use of maturity models in the contracting organizations working in the construction industry. This paper constitutes a part of a larger research project aims to fill this gap. To achieve this, an extensive literature review has been conducted on the predominant existing maturity models, a market survey to assess the current status of maturity awareness in the construction contracting organizations has been developed and the basis of integrated framework for appraisal and improvement of project management practices for the contracting organizations working in the Egyptian construction industry have been proposed.