Influence of Risk Management Strategies on Delivery of Urban Housing Projectin Kenya: a Case of Affordable Housing Program in Nairobi County

Abstract

Affordable housing is a universal challenge for cities in both developing and developed economies. In the global scene, an estimated 330 million urban households face a shortage of decent housing. In Kenya, the housing deficit is estimated to be 1.85 million units. To alleviate this problem, Kenya’s Affordable Housing Programme (AHP) was launched in December 2017. The State Department for Housing and Urban Development (SDHUD) was tasked with program. However, the phase one of 228 Affordable Housing Programme (AHP) is complete and has suffered a time overrun of sixteen days. Additionally, the second phase scheduled to be complete by July2020 is yet to be completed. Therefore project shows indicators of poor project delivery due to minimal adoption of project risks management strategies. This research project therefore sought to find out the influence of risk management strategies on delivery of urban housing project in Kenya. The objectives of this study were: to examine the influence of risk avoidance, risk control, risk retention and risk transfer strategies on the delivery of this project. The research design was exploratory descriptive survey. The target population for this study was87 upper and middle level managers working at the Department. The study used stratified and simple random sampling techniqueand Yamane’s formulae to arrive at a sample size of 72 respondents. The study used semi-structured questionnaires to collect data. The findings were presented in form of tables. A pilot study was conducted to test validity and reliability of the research instruments. Content validity was used as validity test and cronbanch’s alpha coefficient used to establish the reliability of each section of the questionnaire. The data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics including mean, percentages and frequencies and inferential statistics that is multiple regression models. The findings indicated that risk avoidance (β = 0.172; p< 0.05), risk control(β =0.456; p< 0.05), risk transfer(β = 0.207; p< 0.05), and risk retention(β =0.175; p< 0.05) were significant factors that delivery of urban housing project in Kenya. The study concluded that there is a significant positive relationship between risk avoidance strategy, risk control strategy, risk retention strategy and risk transfer strategy and delivery of urban housing project in Kenya. The study recommended thatthe department ensure that the ongoing and future projects have a re-insurance contract and that the department further increase the adoption of risk avoidance, risk control and risk retention strategy in order to ensure project delivery and finally it should put more effort in improving adoption of risk transfer strategies