INFLUENCE OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT PRACTICES ON IMPLEMENTATION OF COUNTY GOVERNMENTS PROJECTS IN KENYA: A CASE OF NAKURU COUNTY
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate influence of project management practices on implementation of county government projects in Kenya. The researcher focused on the situation at the County of Nakuru as a case study. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design as aided in the determination of the current state of affairs in the County of Nakuru. The target population comprised of 78 county government projects in Nakuru County completed between 2011 and 2015. Data was analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively using SPSS. It was notable that there exists strong positive relationship between the independent variables and dependent variable as shown by R value (0.786). It shows that the independent variables in the study were able to explain 61.80% variation in the implementation of county government projects while the remaining 38.20% is explained by the variables or other aspects outside the model. The study established that independent variables influence implementation of county government projects. The study revealed that the independent variables statistically, strongly and significantly correlated to implementation of county government projects. The study recommended that the projects should have work plan devised to achieve specific objectives within a specified period of time. The project teams should identify the specific schedule activities to produce various project schedules and dependencies among schedule activities. The project managers should identify the needs and expectations of the stakeholders in relation to the success of the project. The success of the project should be dependent on primary customer satisfaction. The study recommended for continuous project monitoring to ensure the county gets value for the invested money in the projects. There is need to enhance a participative monitoring and evaluation to ensure that the management objectives are achieved and evaluation reviews key performance indicators of the project quality carried out regularly. This study confined itself to Nakuru county government projects in Kenya. A comparative study should be carried out to compare whether the findings also apply to other projects in different regions in order to validate whether the findings can be generalized in Kenya.
Key Words Project Planning, Stakeholder Management, Schedule Management, Monitoring and Evaluation, Project Management Practices
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.61426/sjbcm.v5i2.670
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