Assessment of Project Management Agility in Private Real Estate Companies in Addis Ababa

Abstract

Construction projects in the world are facing significant problems of cost overruns, time delay, poor quality, and poor health and safety issues. The Ethiopian construction industry also faces delays, poor quality, cost overruns, low involvement, and stakeholder satisfaction. One reason for this is that Ethiopia's construction industry still relies on traditional approaches rather than modern management systems. Now a days, agile construction management can be most impactful and provide benefits in construction project management. There are limited numbers of studies done with the main target of management from broader context, but none so far has attempted research on agility within construction project management or agility within construction companies. The main objective of this research was to assess the project management agility of private real estate companies which are found in Addis Ababa. Measures containing five enablers, fifteen criterion and thirty-eight attributes was identified by using reviewed literatures and first questionary survey. The population of this study includes private real estate companies in Addis Ababa. The studied real estate companies were chosen by purposive sampling technique and the data was analyzed by using relative importance index and Fuzzy logic approach. Mixed methods research approach was employed. Using the measures, project management agility of companies has been assessed and current level of project management agility of companies were found out. Besides computing agility index, the weaker attributes have low performance and less than the value of Fuzzy performance importance index value based on Pareto principle (20%) also have been identified and some solutions were proposed. Statistical validity of using Fuzzy logic with identified measures was done. Generally, this research contributes a theoretical foundation on how to assess project management agility practice in construction sectors. Practically, real estate companies can use those identified measures to regularly check their project management agility levels and plan for future improvements to deliver what is expected for their customers and to ensure efficient and effective management system.