Influence of project participants related factors on the Performance of railway infrastructure projects: A case of Nairobi commuter rail projects

Abstract

While delivering successful projects continues to remain a challenge in many parts of the world and more so among the developing countries such as Kenya, one cannot underscore the influence of project participants on the overall performance of such projects. This study examined the influence of project participants related factors with respect to the Critical Success Factors (CSF) namely: project manager related factors, design and supervision team related factors, contractor related factors, and client related factors in project performance with particular reference to the Nairobi Commuter Rail infrastructure projects (Syokimau, Imara Daima and Makadara railway stations) implemented by the Kenya Railways Corporation. Quantitative research method was used and descriptive survey as the research design. The sampling procedure was majorly purposeful with a sample size, N of 52 from a target population of 60. The data collection was through structured questionnaire with a response rate of 92.3% and the analysis done using SPSS. The exploratory factor analysis indicated that Client related factors had the greatest influence on the projects performance with a mean criticality index of 3.714, followed by Contractor related factors(3.375), Project manager related factors(3.125), Design/supervision team related factors(3.000). From the ANOVA, with the significant F is 0.009 and from the t-test with all values less than 0.05, it was concluded that the null hypothesis be rejected and that all the project participants’ related factors have a significant influence on the performance of railway infrastructure projects. The regression analysis showed that there was statistically moderate and positive correlation of average 0.5 between the four project participants and project performance and that 54.5 % of the project performance was attributed to the factors under the study with a further 45.5% attributed to other factors not investigated in this study. Similar study should be conducted in a different railway infrastructure project to act as a control project while measuring the similar variables and more to ascertain the objectivity of the findings in this study. This may also provide a large sample size of the target population to be able to come up with more collaborative findings.