Determining success factors in Abu Dhabi health care construction projects: customer and contractor perspectives

Abstract

The importance of project management and its success has been growing along with increasing investment in the construction field. This study aims to identify, categorize and prioritize the critical success factors for health care construction projects in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. An extensive literature review was carried out to identify the success factors for health care construction projects. The analytical hierarchical process was then applied to prioritize the main criteria and sub-criteria of health care construction project success factors. This study consists of 10 main criteria and 36 sub-criteria relevant to health care construction projects. The respondents of this study consist of two main groups: customers and contractors. The customers were selected from one of the leading governmental hospitals in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and the contractors are from a major contracting company operating within the health care industry. From each respondent group, leadership positions were selected from relevant departments, including finance, operations, marketing, engineering and supply chain management. The findings of the study show that the leading critical success factor groups are financial capability and management. Moreover, top management support, adequate funding, availability of resources and effective strategic planning were found to be top factors affecting project success. Differences in priorities were observed between customer and contractor perspectives based on the different roles of each stakeholder. To highlight, customers ranked management and financial capability as the two most important factors, respectively. However, contractor respondents indicated financial capability as most important, followed by management and strategy factors, which scored as equally important. As results shown in this study are obtained from only customers and contractors, future studies could include consultants and regulatory authorities, along with considering more success factors.