Evaluating Levels of Project Planning and their Effects on Performance in the Nigerian Construction Industry

Abstract

This study compares the level of project planning on public andprivate sectors projects and its impact on performance. Thepurpose is to create awareness of the level and effectivenessof the planning done by public and private clients in the deliveryof construction projects. A questionnaire survey administeredto a sample of 130 client representatives selected by stratifi edrandom sampling from the population of public and private clientsin the Nigerian construction industry is used and analysed usingdescriptive statistics, the t-test and Spearman correlation test. Theresults show that the level of preconstruction planning on privatesector projects is higher than that of public sector projects whilethe level of contract planning done by the latter is higher thanthat of the former. Furthermore, the performance of private sectorprojects is higher than that of public sector projects in many of theparameters used. However, the level of preparation of life-cyclecharts that concern project delivery time in both public and privatesectors projects is low and the level of project planning in the twocategories of projects has a limited impact on project performance.The understanding of how public and private sectors projectsperform in planning and its impact are expected to assist publicand private clients to know the challenges ahead of them in theireffort to improve the planning and performance of their projects.