Examining construction and project management perspectives of project-based failure

Projects are distinctive time-constrained undertakings meant to positively generate benefits for their sponsors and other associated stakeholders. They are delivered by Project-based organisations (PBO’s) whose constituent actors can separately consider achievement in relation to a project 'outputs', 'outcomes', and 'impact'. Within the construction sector for example, contracting organisations typically do not recognise projects that fail to meet their principal cost and time targets as successful, whereas the various sponsors, customers, collaborators, and end-users, may agree, or consider the operational consequences of these same projects as ultimately having been positive. The aim of this work, therefore, was to examine the contrasting and complementary perspectives around project-based failure, held in the construction sector by some of its principal constituent actors: the project manager, and the construction manager. To do this requires greater scrutiny and synthesis of the extant literature within and across, the separate construction management, and project management, knowledge bases. Such activity reveals from each respective area, current understanding of what project failure is, and what the 'root-causes' of project failure are considered to be. The results from this work help inform the design of a dedicated research instrument for the data collection stage of a wider research project, which seeks to understand how failure can support learning and action within project-based organisations.