Abstract
M.Phil. (Engineering Management)
The aim of the research was to determine whether governance principles in municipal government projects can promote projects which optimally meet the triple constraints of cost, time and quality. This would be achieved by analysing the impact of the governance principles on these constraints.
Two case studies were conducted in order to examine the following; whether governance principles are important to consider during project implementation, the extent of use or consideration of these governance principles and what impact these governance principles had on the triple constraints of the project, cost time and quality. Each case study consisted of two data collection methods namely: project documentation analysis and a structured research questionnaire.
Findings obtained indicated that governance principles are important to consider during project implementation and the analysis done on the two cases further indicated that these principles have a significant impact on the constraints of a project with the quality constraint being the most impacted. The most significant finding was that the use of these governance principles was found to be inconsistent between the two projects due to lack of integration between the project management office and departments executing the projects.
Furthermore, the findings indicated that although municipal projects almost always address community needs and aim to deliver a service, they fail to comply with trends of good corporate governance and this may lead to fruitless, wasteful, unauthorised and irregular expenditure.
The research recommends an amendment on the current governance structure with improved integration between the project management office and project departments; this would ensure that governance is better integrated into the overall project spectrum whilst the consideration of governance would become more consistent across the whole organisation.