Project success and critical success factors of construction projects from the perspective of a multicultural team: a case study in Guyana

Abstract

Although project success and the factors contributing to project success are topics of great relevance to project management professionals, there is still no consensus on what project success is and what the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) are for construction projects. This work aims to identify the main concepts of project success and the main CSFs of construction projects based on broad bibliographic research and a survey with a multicultural team formed by professionals from all around the world, with different ages and experience, working on an international construction project in Guyana to critical analyze their understanding about project success and CSF. Sixty-five people were selected to run the survey and forty-four answers were received and analyzed. Findings reveal that project success is mainly defined as the project’s completion on time, cost, quality, health and safety, environmental performance, participant satisfaction, user satisfaction, and commercial value. The results also show that of the twenty CSFs selected among the sixty identified in the literature, seven were considered by the survey respondents to be the most important. This study helps project management professionals to direct their efforts toward the most important CSFs.