The practice of financial project management in the consulting engineering industry

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to understand more clearly the challenges that practicing project managers in the consulting engineering industry face in trying to avoid project overruns. Practicing project managers in the Commonwealth of Virginia who had experienced projects with overruns participated in semi-structured interviews and data from those interviews was used to identify emergent themes and patterns. Eight thematic categories emerged from the data: (a) motivation, (b) challenges of project managers, (c) perceived effect of challenges to work performance, (d) experience with project overruns, (e) experience with no project overruns, (f) causes of project overruns, (g) professional development opportunities, and (h) suggestions to improve work performance of project managers. The research revealed specific elements in the practice of financial project management that were contributory factors in project overruns. The recommendation is that consulting engineering organizations and academia may benefit from the results of this study and have a consideration for training and education that prepares project managers in advance for the challenges they face. This may lead to enhancements in strategy planning to address those challenges and potential benefits of improvements in the practice of financial project management that improve the financial and competitive position of the organization.