Factors Affecting the Performance of Construction Projects in Pakistan

There is a French dictum "when the construction industry prospers everything prospers". Construction, a term that encompasses activities related to the creation of physical infrastructure and related activities, plays a crucial role in the economy of any country with estimated share of 40-60 % in gross fixed capital formation and having linkage of more than 60 other associated industries. Today, construction is the second largest sector in Pakistan's economy after agriculture. Roughly 30-35% of employment is directly or indirectly affiliated with the construction sector. In Pakistan, a Construction Project can be categorized as high risk as it is very complex and involves a variety of stakeholders looking after their own interests. In order to make sure that the projects are completed within the key measures of budgeted cost, allocated time and required quality, identification of causes affecting the project performance is very much necessary so that stakeholders can take proactive steps to avoid such situations and manage effectively and systematically to achieve the project performance objectives of time, cost and quality. The purpose of this Paper is to investigate the major obstacles and constraints in the performance of construction projects in Pakistan. In this paper a local construction project case study and facts which I observed during my 16+ years of experience in dealing with construction projects are taken into account to document the bottlenecks. The case study is the construction of Earth Dam Project in Tribal region of KPK, where I worked as a Resident Engineer. The project performance has been suffered adversely equally by roles played by the design consultant, the Employer, the supervisory consultant, the Contractor and country political situation and regional security. Finally, main recommendations with discussions are presented that will help to overcome the related obstacles and hindrances in project performance in construction industry of Pakistan. Similar methodology is adopted in Document of the World Bank Discussion Paper Series: Technical Note:9 LOCAL CASE STUDIES November 2007, where case studies of several past infrastructure projects in different sectors including roads, airport, motoway and irrigation were reviewed to document the bottlenecks which occurred during the various processes involved in the life cycle of infrastructure projects. Identifying such processes allows a better understanding of the capacity constraints in planning, designing, programming, procurement, contract administration, financing and budgeting, execution and other stages in a project cycle.