Exploring critical success factors for developing infrastructure projects in Malaysia - main contractors' perspective

Abstract

The construction industry needs to develop methodologies and techniques to better promote quality engineering and minimize losses. This study aims to identify the Critical Success Factors (CFSs) that contribute to the successful development of infrastructure projects in Malaysia and examine their possible impact on project objectives in scope, time, cost and quality. Main contractors are usually intensively involved in the development of infrastructure projects. However, there is limited research touching on main contractors’ view on CSFs for infrastructure projects in Malaysia. Therefore, this study is carried out to explore this topic from the main contractors’ perspective. Based on an extensive literature review, 33 candidate CSFs were identified and examined. Practitioners in selected companies that had been intensively involved in infrastructure development in Malaysia were invited to participate in a questionnaire survey. The questionnaire survey was designed to elicit professional opinions of those practitioners on the significance level and the impact on project objectives of the identified candidate CSFs. A significance index (SI) was calculated to show the significance level of the candidate CSFs. This explorative study has found that the majority of the 33 identified candidate CSFs were perceived to be of critical significance by the respondents. Some of them hold particular importance to achieving project management objectives in terms of scope, time, cost, and quality. The findings may be used as a checklist so as to increase the quality and success rate of future infrastructure projects in Malaysia. Research limitations and future directions are also discussed.