A study of failure and abandonment of public sector-driven civil engineering projects in Nigeria: An empirical review

Abstract

Incessant failure and abandonment of public sector projects are still posing serious concern and challenges to the society and other stakeholders in civil engineering and construction industries. The study identifies and examines the salient factors and the warning signals responsible for failure and abandonment of public sector driven civil engineering projects with a view of directing efforts towards forestalling the problems. Opinion survey was adopted with area and judgmental sampling procedures. Primary data based on the identified factors, was captured with the instrument of questionnaire from professionals in civil engineering projects operating in the South East geopolitical zone of Nigeria. The analytical tools used in the study were severity index, spearman's rank correlation coefficient, relative agreement factors and Kendall's coefficient of concordance (W.). The rankings of different professionals were significantly correlated. The result of percentage relative agreement factors indicates that the most salient factors causing failure and abandonment of public sector driven civil engineering projects in order of significance are frequent changes in government and political power, unreliable mode of financing and payment of completed work, and project contract sum indirectly used to compensate political big-wigs etc. Wtest further substantiates the results by indicating significant degree of concordance in opinion of experts. The study therefore concludes that politically-induced corruption, undefined and non compliance to the agreed mode of financing and payment of completed work are the bane of project success. It is therefore a matter of legislation and policy formulation which should be instituted to avert failure and abandonment of public sector-driven civil engineering projects.

Contributing Factors of Poor Construction Project Performance in Nigeria

“…Lack of safety Contractor Factors (CoF) 33 Poor planning and scheduling during construction of project by contractors 34 Manpower shortage 35…”

“…Construction projects in Nigeria and worldwide are facing a lot of obstacles and imprecision as a result of the failure in meeting the project deadlines that had resulted to low quality, cost overruns and invariably leads to failure & abandonment of such projects (Amade et al, 2015). The persisting condition of failure and abandonment of projects by the public sector are continuously bringing serious challenges to the stakeholders in the construction industry (Ubani and Ononuju, 2013). Globally, many contractors have failed in meeting the performance requirements during the construction of projects.…”

“…In recent time, meeting out the time, cost, and quality requirements of the work has been the prominent points in defining a project success (Nandhinipriya and Kowsalya, 2015). The complex nature, uncertain and dynamic state of most construction projects created obvious problems of not achieving their initially stated objectives (Ubani and Ononuju, 2013).…”

Assessment of resuscitation strategies of abandoned projects: A case study of public tertiary education institutions’ buildings in Osun State, Nigeria

“…Both publicly and privately initiated construction projects are abandoned at various stages of construction for reasons that are, among others, substantially political factors, inadequate planning, wrong estimate, incompetent project management, and inadequate finance (Report on abandoned projects, 2011; Ayodele & Alabi, 2011;Olalusi & Otunola, 2012;Hanachor, 2012;Ubani & Ononuju, 2013;Ewa, 2013;Ihuah & Benebo, 2014;Okwudili, 2014;Alao & Jagboro, 2017).…”

“…Abandoned tertiary education institutions projects seem to have persisted, because either there are no specifically defined strategies for their revival or the strategies being employed to revive them are ineffective. These occurrences and tendencies have triggered a number of studies relating to abandoned projects (Ayodele & Alabi, 2011;Olalusi & Otunola, 2012;Hanachor, 2012;Ubani & Ononuju, 2013;Ewa, 2013;Ihuah & Benebo, 2014;Okwudili, 2014;Tijani & Ajagbe, 2016;Alao & Jagboro, 2017;Mac-Barango, 2017). However, there is a paucity of studies on strategies for the resuscitation of abandoned tertiary education institutions projects in Nigeria.…”