Selecting the most appropriate project manager to improve the performance of the occupational groups in road construction projects in warm regions

This research proposes a framework to determine the most appropriate project manager (PM) to enhance the performance of occupational groups (POGs) in large, medium, and small road construction projects in warm regions. The occupational groups (OGs) in road projects were divided into three categories: workers, technicians, and engineers. Using the Pareto principle, 14 critical project manager competencies (PMCs) were extracted from a 70-item list developed by performing a comprehensive literature review. Two indexes were ranked in each size of road project using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) technique: which OG's performance improves the most when the PMCs identified are implemented, and the importance of each PMC in improving the POGs. The results showed that in small projects, a PM with strong communication skills is needed to maximize the performance of all three OGs, whereas negotiation skills in medium projects and project management knowledge in large projects are the most critical PMCs that a PM should possess to increase engineers' performance. The findings can help road construction firms to select the most appropriate PM to improve the POGs for road projects by project size, eventually leading to project success. The principal distinction of this research is its investigation of the correlation between PMCs and the POGs across different road project sizes. The main limitation of this research is that the research scope was limited to warm zones.