The Role of Procurement Method in Project Performance- a Comparative Study Between Traditional and Alternative Methods

Abstract

Procurement is an important area of construction dealing as it does with the overall planning, management and organization of a project from inception to completion. The procurement of construction projects in Kenya as with many other commonwealth countries has since independence been dominated by the traditional procurement method and a comparison of the kind undertaken in this research would not have been possible some time in the past. In the last few decades however, new methods of procurement have been developed whose main deviation from the traditional method is the emphasis on management and/or project integration. A lot of benefits have been claimed to accrue from use of the contemporary procurement methods particularly with regard to the three pillars of project performance namely programme, budget and product also referred to as time, cost and quality performance. It was found necessary therefore to study a sample of projects that have used each of either traditional procurement methods and the contemporary procurement methods to try and determine if the claimed benefits , indeed exist in the local context. The study concentrates on time and cost performance of these projects. Another area of study is on whether proper consideration is given to the choice of procurement method that matches the needs of the project and the evaluation is done using a client priority based evaluation chart. The findings that emerge show that indeed, projects that were carried out using the alternative procurement methods performed better in terms of adherence to programme and budget and this findings are confirmed by a statistical test of hypotheses. It also emerges that in many projects, the procurement method selected may not have been the best as it did not match the needs of the project thus putting IV a question mark on the popular rule of thumb method for selection of procurement method. It is also noted that many consultants, even those whose projects used the traditional procurement method knew of and believed the contemporary procurement methods can give better cost and time performance. In view of this, it is recommended that growth of the contemporary procurement methods be encouraged. It is hoped that this research will be a step forward in the quest for better performance of construction projects with particular regard to this important subject of procurement.