Core competencies for construction project managers in Malaysia

In order to survive in a competitive market, many organizations today are looking for the “competitive advantages”. One of these “competitive advantages” is having competent personnel and competent project managers. Therefore, pioneer organizations have a remarkable strive on increasing their personnel capabilities and competencies. As a matter of fact, in contemporary human resource management (HRM) practice, establishing competency of an individual is considered as a resourceful and robust tool (Collin, 1997). For being successful in a business market, project-based organizations should be successful in their projects. One of the factors that influence project success is the employment of competent project managers. Crawford (2000) points out that a competent project manager is a factor that affects project success. Thus, this leads to the development of some standards for assessing project manager’s competencies (Crawford, 2001). Project manager’s competency standards illustrate some evaluative criteria, which not only can be used for measuring manager’s performance, finding training and development needs, setting of goals among project managers and acting as the basis for succession planning (Dainty, Cheng, & Moore, 2003), but also can be used for predicting performance (Motowidlo, Borman, & Schimt, 1997) and providing a performance management system. 1.2 RESEARCH BACKGROUND AND PROBLEM STATEMENTThe competency-based standards which have been developed by project management institutes are as in the following sequence: “Project Manager Competency Development Framework” which is carried out by “Project Management Institute” in 2002, “IPMA Competence Baseline Version 3.0” which is published by “International Project Management Association” in 2006 “AIPM professional competency standards for project management” which is developed by “Australian institute of Project management” in 2008, and “APM Competence Framework” which is developed by Association for Project Management in 2008”. These standards are prepared based on collective opinions of experienced practitioners in project management and their understanding on competencies required for effective project managers (Crawford, 2005). However, there are some researches that investigate effectiveness of project managers based on other point of views. For instance, Fraser and Zakaria (2003) examined project manager’s effectiveness based on stakeholder’s perception. Crawford (2005) conducted a research for project management competency based on senior management perception. Although the existing project managers competency standards are trying to propose a comprehensive model that can be used widely to cover most projects, they fail to do so. For instance, AIPM standard and PMCD framework fail to cover all project manager’s competency requirements such as Contextual competencies or in IPMA and APM standards, competency requirements in different project phases are neglected. Other existing project manager’s competency models also fail to propose a comprehensive model. In a research conducted by Ilias, Abdelnaser, and Mohd Wira (2009) for developing a job competency model for consultant project managers (CPMs), they determined a set of minimum standards for skills and competencies required for consultant project managers. In this research these competencies were addressed by consultant project management (PMC) firms that registered with ministry of finance in Malaysia.In 2010, Jabatan Kerja Raya Malaysia (JKR) developed competency standards for project management which is called “JKR Competency Standards for Project Management Registered Project Manager.” This standard prepared based on collaboration between JKR and a team of Australian consultants by using Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM) Project Competency Standards.