Development of a Public Road Works Contract Management Framework for the Zambian construction industry

Road contracts are not always delivered within time, on budget and to the required quality. Consequently, the aim of this study was to develop a Public Road Contract Management Framework for the Zambian Construction Industry (ZCI) to facilitate timely completion of roadworks, which are executed to the desired quality, and at the budgeted cost. The study adopted a sequential exploratory research design to identify and determine the associated challenges and critical success factors (CSFs), respectively, in the ZCI. This was achieved by initially conducting an extensive literature review. Ranking the data obtained from 92 respondents via a survey questionnaire revealed the following as some of the major challenges: viability of strategic plans being affected by political regime changes, failure to allocate the contract with the required funds, lengthy payment processes, and lack of reviews to document lessons learnt and best practices. Some of the top CSFs were the following: preparation of comprehensive feasibility studies, allocating the contract with the required funds in the budget, adequate funding during implementation, and enhanced record keeping. The developed framework was validated by seven experts through a Delphi technique. The Spearman correlation coefficient showed that there was a strong positive relationship of 0.776 between contract implementation and monitoring and control.