Dynamics of supply chain management in the Kenyan construction Industry

Abstract

Construction project failures in Kenya are evident throughout the country and continue to draw great concern to all stakeholders as a result of consequent economic and social impacts. Supply chain management (SCM) practices have been used successfully in the manufacturing industry and have particularly been recognized as having made most manufacturing companies’ successful. Achievements offered by SCM practices are therefore capable of reducing construction project failures . This study sought to establish the current global supply chain management practices and determine how supply chain management visibility is affecting project performance in the construction industry in Kenya. The research study adopts cross-sectional survey research design to establish the causal relationship among Supply Chain management practices and project performance. The population of the study was 199 construction firms. The study use stratified sampling to select a sample size of 65. On average, 1.54% of the respondents indicated that they implemented the SCM best practices frequently, 81.54% of respondents indicated that they implemented the SCM best practices sometimes while 16.92% of respondents indicated that they never implemented the SCM practices. The study established that there existed a positive relationship between physical flow integration, financial flow integration, information flow integration, trust and Project Performance in construction industry. The study concluded that SCM best practices have a positive contribution on construction project performance and that improved implementation of SCM best practices by Kenyan construction firms can lead to improved construction project performance and reduce construction project failures in the industry. The study recommends that construction firms should focus significantly on improving their degree of SCM best practices implementation to boost project success. This study provides the stakeholders with a point of reference in establishing a value-sequenced transformational roadmap for mitigating actions against construction project failures in Kenya.