Cost and time control practice of construction projects in the UK: The pursuit of effective management control

The aim of project control is to ensure projects finish on time, within budget and achieve other project objectives. It is a complex task undertaken by project managers in practice. During the last few decades, numerous project control techniques, methods and software packages have been developed. Despite this many projects still do not achieve their cost and time objectives. Research in this area has so far has mainly been devoted to identifying causes of cost and time overruns. There is limited research geared at studying factors inhibiting the ability of practitioners to effectively control their projects, issues surrounding the usage of the various project control techniques in practice and dedicated development of mitigation for identified problems. To address this, a detailed study of the cost and time control practice of projects in the UK was conducted utilising a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. The study identified the most important factors inhibiting effective control of cost and time during construction projects and revealed the topical issues affecting project control in practice from practitioners' viewpoint. A model that can be used to effectively control the cost and time objectives during the project control process was also developed and evaluated using the Delphi technique. The model also incorporated a good practice checklist containing 90 measures developed for the mitigation of the top five leading project control inhibiting factors (design changes, risks/uncertainties, inaccurate evaluation of project time/duration, complexities and non-performanceo f subcontractors).T he study concludest hat the developed model can help project managers improve the effectiveness of control of their projects and recommends that practitioners not only need to apply appropriate cost and time control methods but also need to consider and manage the potential impact of project control inhibiting factors and the other bottlenecks affecting their ability to actualise effective project cost and time control in practice.