Influence Of Stakeholders’ Relationship Management On Time And Cost Performance Of Tertiary Educational Building Projects In South-West, Nigeria

ABSTRACT

Construction stakeholders’ management and stakeholders’ relationship management has not been fully utilised in the Nigerian construction industry. Construction stakeholder management (CSM) is considered as a system with its component parts whilst stakeholder relationship management (SRM) is one of the sub-systems. CSM addresses the issues and concerns of stakeholders to positively impact on project outcome while SRM. The key to efficient construction stakeholder management is the management of relationships among the project stakeholders. Since stakeholder management is critical to ensuring project success, it can be said that relationship management among stakeholders is an important ingredient for project success. The construction industry has persistently recorded poor stakeholder’s relationship management in the last two decades. The poor record of SRM in the built environment could be linked to the introduction of risk and varying interests into the projects, thereby affecting project performance. The aim of the study is to assess the effect of construction stakeholders’ relationship management on time and cost performance of tertiary educational building projects in Southwest, Nigeria with a view to enhancing overall construction project outcome. The study set out to assess essential SRM attributes as well as the factors influencing SRM of educational building projects. The study elicited data from project leaders/managers through research questionnaire using cross section survey design. The study is a project-based research with about 110 recently completed building sampled from tertiary educational institutions in Lagos, Ogun and Oyo states. The research questionnaire was analysed using SPSS v.23. The statistical tools used to analyse the collected data include frequencies, percentages, mean scores, factor analysis and regression analysis. The study revealed that project consultants, contractors, client and institution’s supervisory personnel have direct contract relationship with the client and were actively involved in the building project delivery while government agencies, local community and other relevant agencies were adjudged to be rarely involved in the building project delivery and a passive contract relationship with the client. Findings showed that communication, information exchange, respect and mutual objectives are the top ranked SRM attributes for educational building projects within tertiary institutions. The study indicated that stakeholder-related factors, project related factors and attitudinal factors are the major factors promoting SRM in building delivery. The study also highlighted that the major factors inhibiting stakeholder’s relationship management in the sampled building projects were stakeholders inflicted, project inflicted and leaders inflicted. The study indicated that there is a strong impact of communication, information exchange, respect and mutual objectives as SRM attributes on construction time and cost performance in the delivery of tertiary education building projects. Prompt and effective communication among stakeholders ensures the management of relationship during the construction process. The change in project scope and political influence on the educational building projects is one of the challenges to stakeholder’s relationship management. The study concludes that an improvement in the some selected SRM attributes during the construction process will reduce the incidence of delay and cost escalation on such projects.