Developing a framework for project status reporting in South African state-owned companies.

Abstract

There are two prominent organisations that play a critical role in the everyday life of most South Africans through freight logistics and electricity provision, Transnet State-Owned Company (SOC) and Eskom SOC, respectively. Within these organisations, billions of taxpayers’ Rand are invested into hundreds of capital projects that are frequently delayed. A capital project is a long-term, capital-intensive investment project aimed at building-upon, adding to or improving a capital asset. It is defined by its large scale and exorbitant costs relative to other projects. A project status report summarises the position or condition of a particular project during a stated period of time. It may be published as a single, stand-alone report or as part of a series of distinguishable, identifiable portions forming part of a larger report. During project status reporting, and according to the project management ‘iron triangle’, it is a measure of good governance for stakeholders to be informed of project progress during its lifecycle in terms of cost, schedule, scope, and quality. The key challenge, however, is that this can lead to stakeholders being unaware of various other constraints which affect capital projects executed by these organisations. Literature indicating how this challenge can be overcome is scarce. In developing a holistic framework for project status reporting in South African SOCs as its primary finding, this study suggests that additional project management constraints should be considered during project status reporting. Fifteen themes were identified. Delays in approval processes which can negatively influence all other project management constraints and utilisation of centralised and digitised project management software were exclusively identified during the analysis of primary data. Themes solely identified during the review of secondary data were safety, health and environment; highly regulated disciplines within the project management space. Other themes identified in secondary data were document control which is responsible for the creation, review, modification, storage, issuance, distribution, accessibility, and destruction of project documents, which should be undertaken together with the procurement of project-related goods and services which, if not strategically planned and executed, may stall progress onsite. Appropriately, most themes were present both in the primary and secondary data. These include the project cost management involving a set of processes that will allow the project to be completed within the approved budget. Schedule management details the activities and milestones that comprise the project. Scope definition is a process of developing a comprehensive description of the desired project outcome. Project quality bespeaks a philosophy of adherence to standards. Resources relate to everything that is required to perform project activities or tasks. Risks emanating from within and outside the project need to be understood. Contract lifecycle management, involves legally binding documents between the contractor and client. Together with project reporting and communication, the processes that are required to ensure timely and appropriate planning, collection, creation, distribution, storage, retrieval, control, monitoring, and the ultimate disposition of project information are additional considerations. This framework formalises project status reporting pertaining to Eskom and Transnet SOCs. It nurtures effective communication, a key attribute in project management. It considers a holistic view of project management constraints, to give stakeholders an unparalleled view of all the project management disciplines. It promotes accurate flow of holistic project status information to both internal and external stakeholders, to aid problem-solving and decision-making during the project lifecycle. It advocates the utilisation of enterprise management offices as a means to improve stakeholder feedback. Lastly, it eliminates bureaucratic project management structures as a factor that is capable of undermining project status reporting. The research design is phenomenology and the research approach is qualitative. The general population, target population and accessible population are concepts that were clearly articulated in order to guide the reader in appraising sampling credibility. The techniques used and the outcomes of the research study were then declared and defined. Thereafter, purposive sampling was used to identify a SOC with an accessible population of 20 individuals responsible for project status reporting. Due to the small, manageable size of the accessible population, census sampling was used to maximise data collection points. Ultimately, 16 respondents were interviewed. Data were collected using self-administered, semi-structured interviews. NVivo software was utilised to find relationships, differences and interconnectedness between the themes in the primary and secondary data. This study recommends that Eskom and Transnet SOCs adopt this framework during project status reporting. Future research may want to refine the framework for wider application. Alternatively, future research may want to rank the project management constraints to determine the impact that each has vis-à-vis others.