Factors influencing completion of selected Kenya police service housing projects in central Kenya

Abstract

In almost every part of the world, Kenya included, projects are initiated for a specific purpose, which should be achieved within a stipulated time frame and agreed budget. This should be the position if the client, the project initiator, has to get value for their money. However occasionally this might not happen and the project life cycle process get disrupted at the initiation, planning or design, execution or implementation, or even at the closure stage. Kenya Police Service Housing project in Central Kenya is an example of uncompleted project. This research project investigated factors which influenced the completion of selected five police housing projects in Othaya and Karatina in Nyeri county, Kangema in Murang’a county and Thika and Kikuyu police stations in Kiambu county. The research adopted a case study design and looked at the factors that generally impacted on project life cycle process at the execution or implementation phase, where both quantitative and qualitative approaches were adopted. Data was collected by interviewing purposefully sampled stakeholders involved in the implementation or execution of the five housing projects. The stakeholders sample size was 70 arrived at by purposively sampling the Main Contractor, the three sub-contractors for Electrical, Plumbing and Drainage, and Low and High level water tanks respectively for each of the five selected housing projects and for the five projects combined, the client representative, the Accountant, the Procurement officer, the Project Manager, the project Architect, Quantity Surveyor, Electrical Engineer, Mechanical Engineer, Structural Engineer and the Clerk of works, thus 14 respondents for each project. The data was analyzed using descriptive and quantitative statistics, according to the research questions and objectives of the study. Collected data was subjected to content analysis by focusing on how all individuals responded to questions in each objective and then organizing them by objectives and questions in each objective to look across all respondents and their answers in order to identify consistencies and differences which were generalized. The study found out that, all Police Service Housing project in Central region were not completed. Major cause of delay in completion was delay in release of funds from the Government. All contractors had capacity to carry out project implementation since majority were experienced and selected competitively. Adequate monitoring and evaluation also took place to access progress. The study also found out that there was unfavorable project prioritization policy on completion of the housing projects which affected project completion negatively.