Abstract
Procurement and subsequent delivery of infrastructure projects by a Provincial Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (PDPWI) can be achieved through two ways, namely: outsourcing or insourcing (in-house). Outsourcing is a widely used method for transferring non-core activities of the firm to external service providers. It is used across different industries in both public and private sectors globally. Conversely, insourcing is regarded as the opposite of outsourcing. The delivery of PDPWI projects is always late, incurring extra costs and often of average quality. The purpose of this paper is to investigate reasons behind the decision to either outsource or insource public infrastructure projects and to subsequently propose a comparative analysis for outsourcing versus insourcing in Department of Public Works and Infrastructure at a Provincial level. A Grounded Theory research design will be deployed for data collection. Accordingly, relevant project-centric documents spanning a duration of five (5) years was reviewed whilst semi-structured interviews were conducted concurrently, with a purposively selected sample of interviewees. The data emerging from the deployment of both data collection techniques enabled an understanding of the attributes of projects which were either outsourced or insourced and the performance of such projects thereof. The data was analysed according to the procedures associated with the grounded theory method research design. As such, open coding, axial coding and pattern matching were carried out at several intervals to develop categories and themes. Besides highlighting the usefulness of the grounded theory methodology for such study, the study’s findings established the absence of a properly structured approach to decision making within the PDPWI as it pertained to the choice of either outsourcing or insourcing construction projects. Yet, it was furthermore observed that the nature of outsourced projects differed from insourced projects. On performance of these projects, the study found both the procurement pathways yielded the same poor results, and the study indicated that outsourced projects performed slightly better in comparison to insourced projects in terms of cost certainty. These findings culminated in the evolution of a comparative analysis which is expected to guide effective decision making within PDPWI on which projects to be outsourced or insourced. The proposed comparative analysis of performance of in-house versus outsourced can be used as a guideline in future for procurement of public infrastructure projects by decision makers in public sector.
M.Tech. (Construction Management)