Investigate the criteria of what determines the success of a project. You may use a hypothetical project or one of your own choice or one which has been discussed in lectures to assist your...

AN INVESTIGATION ON THE CRITERIA
FOR
CONSTRUCTION PROJECT SUCCESS
Introduction
In today’s complex construction industry landscape,successful completion of a project is an essential criteria considering the number of construction failures which have occurred over a period of time.There are a number of dynamic factors which cannot be avoided and for the proper execution of a project, construction management is required.According to Mckinsey & Co. Inc. survey, large projects take upto. 20% longer time to finish and are almost 80% over budget.
Effective planning, oversight and anticipating issues and controlling them beforehand helps in a successful project completion.
Cause of project failure
In most of the projects, the managers often give importance to the beginning of the project but fail to understand the importance of its finish. Lack of planning in the initial stage leads to increase in cost, over consumption of material and decline in quality of the finished products which ultimately leads to its failure.
What is success in terms of construction project?
Satisfaction of the owner is one of the major assessment of the project’s success. The owner should receive value for money in terms of quality, efficiency and time. Over a due course of period sustainable factors like carbon emissions describe the projects success.
Determining the success of a project is not an easy task.As it is evident that a number of factors need to be considered while determining that.There are some major factors which can help one be aligned with what is expected from the final product.
The factors affecting the success of the project are as follows:
a) Budget of the Project
For any kind of project, planning the budget is of key importance.However, keeping the project under the proposed budget is not an easy task. The most important thing to keep the budget in check is tracking the progress time to time of the project. During the construction project, the cost of the work done should be periodically checked and compared with the estimated cost and if any major difference is found, the factors causing the increase in cost should be analysed and rectified.
To keep any of your project cost-effective, it is essential to maintain records of all the activities of the project. These records thus serve as a reference for future projects so that their budget is maintained within limits.
b) Project’s Completion period
While assessing the success of a project, one of the most essential factor to be considered is the duration of project completion.In order to avoid confusion at the construction site, dividing the entire project into activities and setting deadlines for these activities can be of great help.
Although in any construction project time delay is unavoidable sometimes due to lack of resources, weather conditions, other unexpected circumstances , it is important that efforts are made to keep the activities durations on time and try completing the project in the proposed time. otherwise the time delay can further have an affect on the cost of the project.
c) Quality of the project
For any project’s success, the quality of the end product is of utmost importance. In case of construction projects the quality becomes all the more important as low quality work can have life taking repercussions.
Before the construction-work is started it is important to ensure the quality of the materials is checked and is within the permissible values. For example the cement should be of certain grade for bridge work and of different grade for roadwork. Similarly other materials like bricks, aggregates and all such materials...