Critical Success Factors, Risk Allocation, and Schedule Planning in Major Infrastructure Projects: A Structural Equation Modeling Analysis

Abstract

There are usually cost and time issues, and problems with quality, with big infrastructure projects. This paper analyses the impact of governance and leadership capacity, technical and organizational capability, stakeholder alignment, quality of risk management, and maturity of schedule management on operational project performance, using the structural equation modeling technique. The analysis was performed on an anonymized dataset with 400 project observations across six regions, six infrastructure sectors, five delivery models and eight professional roles. Reflective measurement blocks were studied based on standardized loadings, Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability, average variance extracted and the heterotrait-monotrait ratios. Operational project performance combined several perceptual measures and objective measures including schedule and cost performance indices, delays, cost overruns, change orders, safety incidents, and variance in critical path. The analysis showed that governance and leadership capacity positively predicted the quality of risk allocation (β = .485), and that technical and organizational capability positively predicted the maturity of schedule planning (β = .433). The quality of risk allocation (β = .319), and the maturity of schedule planning (β = .275), positively predicted operational performance, with the model explaining 68.1% of the variance. Stakeholder alignment did not have a significant direct effect on operational performance (β = .028, p = .456); however, an indirect effect through the quality of risk allocation was observed, along with governance, leadership and technical capacity, with partial mediation. The size, duration and complexity proxy did not have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between quality of risk allocation and performance, or maturity of schedule planning and performance. The evidenced pathways support the development of a practice-based risk allocation and schedule management framework based on the following concepts: an edge in management and control, absorption and use of relevant information, clarity with respect to the value of contingencies, and governance of P50/P80 milestones.