Dynamics of supply chain management in the Kenyan construction industry: A case study of national irrigation board

Abstract

Many construction projects in Kenya fail by not meeting their cost projections, time schedules and/or quality demands leading to negative economic and social impacts. If the issue of construction project failures in Kenya is not treated with the seriousness it deserves and its continuance halted, it will be difficult for Kenya to achieve any meaningful growth and development and achievement anticipated in vision 2030 may not be realized. But the benefits offered by supply chain management (SCM) practices could be used to reduce construction project failures in Kenya. SCM best practices have been used successfully in the manufacturing industry and have particularly been recognized as having made Japanese manufacturing companies successful. But so far, there had not been any studies in Kenya showing the importance and relevance of SCM practices in construction projects or assessment of the degree of entrenchment of SCM practices or the impacts of SCM best practices on Construction projects performance in Kenya.Without assessing the degree of entrenchment or analyzing the impacts of SCM best practices on Construction projects performance, it is difficulty to implement solutions offered by SCM studies. This study sought to establish the effects of SCM best practices and supply chain system (SCS) integration on construction project performance in Kenya. To achieve this, various SCM practices together with performance metrics that have played key roles in the global evolution of supply chain management and their current contribution and relevance were reviewed. A qualitative descriptive survey questionnaire was then developed and served on a population of 65 National Irrigation Board (NIB) listed construction firm’s management. A response rate of 83.1% was achieved. The relationships proposed in the study were analysed using descriptive statistics, multiple regression and correlation analysis by use of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) while relationships were tested using Analysis of variance (ANOVA). The study established that NIB projects implement SCM practices to some extent with 1.54% of the respondents indicating that they implemented the SCM best practices frequently, 81.54% of respondents indicating that they implemented the SCM best practices sometimes while 16.92% of respondents indicated that they never implemented the SCM practices. The study further established that interaction between SCM practices and SCS integration influenced NIB construction project performance. The study concluded that SCM best practices have a positive impact 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 recommended that construction firms should focus significantly on improving their degree of SCM best practices implementation to boost project success. The study further recommended further research should to be carried out on construction firms from more than one organization. A further study should also be carried out using simulation method to determine the extent of construction project performance that can be possibly achieved through SCM practices and SCS integration.This study provides the stakeholders with a reference point in establishing a value sequenced transformational roadmap for mitigating actions against construction project failures in Kenya.