Project Management Practices and Quality of Housing Projects in Parklands, Nairobi County, Kenya

Abstract

The world over has in the recent past experienced a tremendous change and shift in all aspects be it technology, commerce, economy and even the construction industry. The shift has been more on customer focus and customer satisfaction. Industry player are working round the clock to produce what customers want and to their standard. This simply means quality and value have become the key edge and focus of production. The housing and construction industry has not been left behind and so industry players right from the architects who design the buildings to engineers to the workman on the site are duty bound to question the quality of the work in progress to be competitive. This research set out to better understand how project management techniques affect the quality of structures in Parklands, Nairobi County. At now, there are 68,344 people living in the Parklands subcounty of Nairobi. There are now 23 active home construction projects in the Parklands subcounty, all of which are being handled by various companies. The goals are as follows: (1) establish the impact of resource management on the quality of Parklands housing projects; (2) evaluate the impact of schedule management on the quality of Parklands housing projects; (3) establish the impact of risk management on the quality of Parklands housing projects; and (4) evaluate the impact of stakeholder management on the quality of Parklands housing projects. Both the management theory of Phillip Crossby and the quality improvement cycle theory of Edward Deming will serve as theoretical anchors for this study. The population of this inferentially descriptive study consisted of construction firms currently working on Parklands-related projects. The respondents were drawn from architects, Quantity surveyors, contractors, project managers, new home owners, and project engineers. The Krejcie and Morgan formula for predicting sample sizes provided the basis for determining the appropriate size of the study's sample, which was determined to be 103 respondents. In the course of this research, quantitative information will be gathered via the use of a questionnaire. SPSS Version 20.0 was used for the inferential data analysis, and the central tendency test was performed (mean, frequencies, percentages ad standard deviation). The results revealed that the relationship and strength between the Quality of housing projects in Parklands and Project management practices increased in the following order; risk management (r=0.574), stakeholder management (r=0.624),resource allocation (r= 0.66), and schedule management (r=0.694).Conclusion is that good management practices affect positively the Quality of housing projects in Parklands subcounty.Thus practitioners and housing professionals must endeavor to judiciously apply sound management practices. The vast majority of respondents were completely in agreement that the methods of project management had a significant impact on the quality of housing developments in Parklands. Because the p-value for the correlation between quality of housing and project management techniques was less than 0.05, the r-value of 0.667 suggested that there was a positive association between the two; hence, there is a positive relationship between project management and quality. The study recommends adherence to strict management practices by all project professionals and stakeholders. The research also recommends the government to be more stringent in guidelines, compliance and enforcement to ensure good management practices are adhered to.This study recommends similar studies to be extended to other subcounties in Nairobi especially where houses and buildings have been collapsing like Embakasi,Kasrani and Mathare subcounties.