Soft skills of construction project management professionals and project success factors

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to identify the soft skills of construction project management; and second, to investigate the influence of these soft skills on project success factors in the Vietnamese construction industry. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire survey was conducted with 108 project management professionals from the Vietnamese construction industry. Partial least square structural equation modelling was employed in data analysis. Findings Four-dimensional structure of project success factors was confirmed in this study. Results also showed that soft skills of project managers significantly contributed to project success factors and hence the project success. Research limitations/implications There may be geographical limitation on the conclusions drawn from the findings. Similarly, the sample size was still small, despite a relatively high response rate. In addition, the majority of the respondents were contractors and clients as other project players were reluctant to respond to the survey. Practical implications This study provides an understanding of the relationship between soft skills and project success factors. Originality/value Although there have been studies focused on soft skills of project management and project success factors, few have attempted to analyse the effects of these soft skills on critical success factors. Thus, this study adds significantly to the existing research on both project management skills and project success factors.

The Competence of Project Team Members and Success Factors with Open Innovation

“…Nguyen et al categorized success factors into four groups: comfort, commitment, competence, and communication, called the 4 COMs [31], the relationship between soft skills and project success factors has been verified in some empirical studies based on the 4 COMs [26]. Comfort, the first success factor, represents the alignment among resources, involvement, and leadership.…”

“…Project success should be related to distinct project success factor and project success criteria. Project success factors are events, conditions, and environments that directly or indirectly contribute to the project success, while project success criteria measure whether the project is successful or not [25,26].…”

Investigating Political Risk Paths in International High-Speed Railway Projects: The Case of Chinese International Contractors

“…The data used in this study were collected from a specially designed questionnaire. As a popular technique to obtain data regarding attitudes and opinions, the questionnaire has been widely accepted by academia in project management study e.g., [39][40][41]. In this study, the questionnaire includes two sections: (1) questions to gather personal information (i.e., years of work experience, position, and institution) on respondents and (2) items to measure the importance of each factor on a Likert scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being very low, and 5 being very high.…”

Gestão do sucesso de um projeto de sistemas de informação realizado no setor público - research-in-progress

“…Há vários trabalhos sobre o tema realizados nos últimos anos (Atkinson 1999, Westerveld 2003 No que respeita aos fatores de sucesso, estes podem ser definidos como entradas do sistema de gestão que influenciam direta ou indiretamente o sucesso do projeto (de Wit 1988). Similarmente ao que acontece no caso dos critérios, há vários trabalhos focados nos fatores de sucesso (Pinto e Slevin 1987, Dvir, Lipovetsky et al 1998, Cooke-Davies 2002, Westerveld 2003, Chow e Cao 2008, Tabish e Jha 2011, Turner 2014, Ferreira, Varajão et al 2016, Osei-Kyei, Chan et al 2017, Rezvani e Khosravi 2018, Zuo, Zhao et al 2018. Estes podem ser relativos às áreas do conhecimento, às fases do projeto e até mesmo aos critérios de sucesso.…”