Influence of contractors’ Capacity on Implementation of Road Infrastructure Projects in Meru County, Kenya.

Abstract

Reliable road infrastructure is key for any nation’s development, but the inability to achieve suitable standards in road infrastructure is a major problem worldwide. Contractors play a central role and the success in implementation of road infrastructure projects depends majorly on the performance of the contractor. This study sought to establish the influence of contractor’s capacity on the implementation of road infrastructure projects in Meru County. This was guided by the following objectives; To determine the influence of contractors’ technical capacity on the implementation of road infrastructure construction projects in Meru County, Kenya; To establish the influence of contractors’ financial capacity on the successful implementation of road infrastructure construction projects in Meru County, Kenya; To investigate the influence of contractors’ quality management on the implementation of road infrastructure construction projects in Meru County, Kenya; To determine the influence of contractors’ management structure on the implementation of road infrastructure construction projects in Meru County, Kenya. The study was anchored on the institutional and resource dependency theories. A correlational research design was used to determine the strength and direction of relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variable. The target population for the study was all the 140 road infrastructure contractors in Meru County, 1 county roads engineer, 1 county accountant, 1 KURA roads engineer, and 40 subcounty projects committee members. The sample size for the study was 126 which was arrived at using Alemeda’s formula. The contractors were stratified based on the sub-counties in Meru County, then simple random sampling was used to get the contractors from each sub-county whose number had been proportionately allocated, while purposive sampling was used for the County Roads Engineer, County Accountant and KURA Roads Engineer. Data was collected using semi-structured questionnaires and interview guides. A pilot study was carried out in Tharaka Nithi County with a sample of 10 contractors. The validity of the research instrument was checked by an expert in the field and reliability was done using the Cronbach Alpha. Quantitative data collected was coded into SPSS v23, then cleaned and analyzed for descriptive statistics, that is, mean, standard deviation, frequencies and percentages. A Pearson correlation coefficient was computed to check the strength of relationship between the variables and a regression model was developed then testing on the hypothesis will be done using ANOVA, then presented in tables. Qualitative data was grouped then analyzed thematically after which the outcome was combined with the quantitative output. The results showed that contractor’s technical capacity has an influence of 0.364 on implementation of road projects, contractor’s financial capacity has an influence of 0.812 on implementation of road projects, contractor’s quality management has an influence of 0.574 on implementation of road projects, and contractor’s management structure has an influence of 0.133 on implementation of road projects. It was also found that contractor’s capacity which was made up of technical, financial, quality management and management structure capacities accounted for a change of 86% in implementation of road infrastructure projects in Meru County. The findings will be useful to the road infrastructure contractors, the ministry in charge of roads and the world of academia. The research recommends that a study be done on other factors influencing the implementation of road construction projects as well as the gender perspective in road construction projects.