EFFECT OF PROJECT CONTROL PRACTICES ON THE PERFORMANCE OF BUILDING CONSTRUCTION FIRMS IN LAGOS STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study aimed to empirically assess the level of project control practices in building construction firms in Lagos State, Nigeria and to evaluate the effect of project control practices on their performance. A survey was conducted to establish the current control practices among 200 respondents from firms registered with the Federation of Construction Industry (FOCI). The variables used in the questionnaire were based on synthesis from existing literature. A list of 34 standard control practices were developed for four key project control tasks: Planning, Monitoring, Analysing and Reporting. These were ranked based on the level of relevance to the construction firms, using mean response rating. The results revealed that development of a programme of work for project (8.75), ensuring the programme of work is realistic (7.68) and ensuring all activities have costs
allocated to them (7.49) were the top three project control practices, while analysing performance using S-curve (4.33), ensuring people are inclined to information on time (4.64) and utilisation of cost value comparison (4.83) were
rated least among the control practices. It can be observed from the result that planning is the most practiced among other project control tasks in the building construction firms. In addition, the study discovered a significant relationship
between project control practices and firm performance. Based on this observation, it is recommended that project control practices are adequately followed by consulting and contracting organisations to improve their overall performance of
the industry.