Project Planning and Implementation of Water Construction Projects in Bomet County, Kenya

Abstract

Water projects all over the world have been initiated for the purpose of solving water problems. For many years in Kenya, various government agencies, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and donors have been investing large sum of money in water projects like building dams, boreholes, and wells. Fewer projects are being completed within the budget or meeting original goals. However, limited research has been carried out on project planning and implementation of water construction projects in Bomet County. Many studies have been carried out on the influence of project planning on projects implementation, but the main focus has been on project management practices and project performance. The study sought to fill this knowledge gap. The main objective of this study was to analyze the relationship between project planning and implementation of water construction projects. It sought to examine the relationship between schedule planning, budget planning, communication planning, resource planning, and the intervention of technology on implementation of water constructions projects in Bomet County. The study used descriptive survey design and therefore, water projects in the county of Bomet were the unit of analysis. The unit of observation were project managers, finance managers, project consultants, site engineers and county administrators who were involved in the project. The target population of the study was 440 and the sample size were 164 respondents drawn from all targeted unit of analysis. This study carried out a census on all types of initiated water projects in the county of Bomet. Pre-test study was administered to 18 respondents of Kajiado County to test the reliability and viability of the instruments. Data was collected through administration of a questionnaire and semi structured individual interview. Regression analysis was used to measure the relationship between variables on project planning and implementation of water construction projects with the help of Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) and Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) software. Further analysis was done to test the significance of the model by use of Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and R2 was used to measure the extent of the goodness of fit of the regression model. Hypothesis was tested by use of t-test at 95% confidence level. The results showed that all the variables, schedule planning, budget planning, communication planning and resource planning were significant on implementation of water project with the F statistics value of 85.480, 49.64, 62.247 and 55.179 respectively and P-value of 0.000. The coefficient determination of explanatory variable explains 52.7% of the variations. Technology integration (moderating variable) was found to have an influence on the relationship between project planning and implementation of water projects. In conclusion, therefore schedule, budget, communication and resource planning influenced implementation of water projects with R of 0.726 and 0.868 in the absence and presence of moderator respectively. The study recommends that Arid and Semi-Arid regions can replicate the findings of this study to improve on accessibility to safe and clean drinking water to its citizens. Furthermore, this study can be used by policy makers to make informed decisions regarding best strategies on water policy.