Highway construction: Success factors in Malaysia

Highways are often high-risk projects due to its importance to a nation’s economic, societal, and political development. Therefore, highway projects need to be successful. Here are the factors that are affecting the success of highway construction projects in Malaysia.

The factors are categorized into internal and external factors from a project manager’s perspective. The internal factors include variables that are usually actionable by project managers, and the external factors are often uncontrollable by project managers.

Internal Factors

Process-related internal factors

Workflows for the design process. Projects without an effective workflow for the design process usually have drawings that are incomplete, inaccurate, or not finalized, which can result in incomplete construction documents for project execution.

Labor-related internal factors

Competencies of project managers. Project managers are suggested to possess skills to all sorts of issues and problems at construction sites, manage numerous people and various types of individuals, and plan and schedule projects.

Adequate workforce is suggested to play a crucial role in ensuring project success. Without the manpower to perform the work, the project can suffer from longer construction schedules and potential delays in delivering the project on time to the owner.

Material-related internal factors

Availability of materials. While theoretically, materials should be that instant during construction, highway projects are suggested to face difficulties in having those materials right on time due to several reasons including the absence of the required materials in local markets, suppliers unable to provide the materials due to material shortages, unreasonable pricing for monopolizing practices, and insufficient ground transportation to deliver materials to the site.

Equipment-related internal factors

Availability of equipment. Lack of equipment affects labor productivity since labor relies on equipment to aid the construction process. For example, the excavator is used to excavating and move a large object. Without it, construction material could not be move resulting in disruption and work stoppage.

External Factors

Construction-site related external factors

Weather. Rain has a stronger influence on highway projects compared to building projects because highway projects are more sensitive towards rainwater.

Site location. Highway projects that involve areas that are challenging for construction, such as terrains that are hilly or rocky, are more demanding compared to those with typical terrains during earthmoving and avoiding drainage issues. On the other hand, construction sites in urban areas also have their challenges, including difficulties acquiring permits from authorities, managing traffic, relocating underground utilities and services, and setting up storage areas.

Third party-related external factors

Upper management can influence success by ensuring projects have front monies for the project before funds from progress payments are available (i.e., financial support), and visiting the sites to provide feedback and motivation to project team members (i.e., emotional support). Also, management can promote project success by ensuring that projects have an adequate number of workers with the appropriate skills.

Clients can support projects by paying progress payments on time and providing constructive feedback to avoid unnecessary stress among project team members.

Public acceptance. Some of the issues caused by the public include a random amount of compensation, disputes during the land acquisition process, and complaints due to traffic congestion to the authorities. These problems may result in idling in projects until the issues are resolved.

Authorities are suggested to influence the success of highway projects due to authorities’ processing times of submittals. Unpredictable and slower than usual processing times might cause issues to highway projects such as idling and unnecessary rescheduling.

For more information on this research, visit: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-899X/712/1/012030