EVALUATING THE EFFECT OF PROCUREMENT PERFORMANCE EVALUATION VARIABLES ON SUCCESSFUL PROJECT DELIVERY IN NORTH-WESTERN NIGERIA

Abstract

Procurement of construction project involves activities ranging from project needs assessment, planning and project management. There are significant factors associated with the process that affect project delivery in terms of cost, time and quality. Poor project performance due to ineffective procurement process across public sector appears to be a lingering problem, this result in cost, time overrun and sometimes lead to structural failure which has a gross effect on economic development. The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of procurement process factors on project performance with respect to cost, time and quality. The study used both explorative and descriptive research design to collect quantitative data from procurement professionals in the North-western Nigeria. Systematic random sampling was used to source 500 respondents. 400 questionnaires were administered as a sample size and 317 responses representing 73.9% were used for the analysis. Descriptive statistics; mean and standard deviation were used for factor ranking while multiple linear regressions (MRL) were used to determine the effect of procurement performance evaluation factors on successful project delivery. The result found that the key factors with high effect on successful project delivery in the study area were: quality of end product (MS = 3.75, SD =0.889), affordable project cost (MS = 3.73, SD =1.047) and price certainty for project evaluation (MS = 3.68, SD =1.024). The result also established that procurement performance evaluation has a tendency of influencing project cost delivery by 21.1%; time delivery by 28.4% and quality delivery by 32.1% respectively. This research will add to the existing literature on public procurement process and serve as information for procurement professionals within the construction industry. Besides, the study developed a framework for predicting the influence of procurement performance evaluation process on project cost, time and quality delivery which can be used in predicting general performance of a project.