Contractors’ organisational structure elements for controlling project cost in the construction industry

Abstract

Setting an organisational structure is a human-based concept that calls for all the elements making construction organisations better in management operations. This paper establishes organisation structure elements for construction project cost control practice by revealing the appropriate constructs for setting organisation structure for controlling and managing construction project cost. This paper employs the Delphi technique approach for collecting data after extracting sixteen (16) constructs from literature. A consensus was reached at the third round. Delphi experts comprised professionals practising in the construction industry. The findings reveal that organisational structure elements assist in controlling and managing of construction cost. High consensus elements include centralisation of authority, number of layers in the formation of corporate structure, patterns of communication, specialisation of members, among others. Contractors and project cost managers can, therefore, use the organisation structure constructs to establish good organisation structure for cost control practice.