Improving Construction Phase Project Planning in the Construction Industry of Ghana: Perceptions of Construction Firms in South Tongu District

ABSTRACT 

 Many standard forms of contracts for building and civil engineering contracts require contractors to submit construction programmes upon the award of contracts. However, such programmes are often not of the required quality and subsequent programmes developed as work progresses are also not sufficiently rigorous to facilitate control measures to be put in place. The aim of the present study was to examine the application of planning techniques in construction project delivery in the South Tongu District and develop measures to enhance the quality of construction programming and control by contractors. The specific objectives of the study included; to identify planning techniques used by contractors in the South Tongu District, to identify key constraints to effective planning and develop strategies for improving the quality of planning for projects at the Construction phase in the South Tongu District. The study adopted a descriptive survey technique involving the administration of survey questionnaires to a randomly selected sample of 86 construction firms registered with the South Tongu District Assembly. The statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) was used for the analysis. The findings of the study revealed that both time and resource oriented planning were adopted by the respondents but the use of the resource oriented planning was dominant.  In regards to the usage of planning techniques, the most widely used planning technique is Gantt Chart followed by Critical Path Method using Activity–on–the–Arrow technique. Key constraints to effective planning discovered by the study included; lack of contractors’ involvement during design stage; frequent interference in project execution by project stakeholders and low investment in computer software. The proposed strategies that might improve the quality of planning in the construction of projects included there should be teamwork between contractors and engineers; the main contractor should be involved at the design stage of the project and construction information of the project must be enhanced and complete. Recommendations were also made for further research.