Factors impeding performance of construction projects designed and supervised by consultants in local government authorities a case study of Tanga region

The identification of factors causing poor performance in construction projects is crucial in order to improve construction projects performance. Many construction projects in Local Government Authorities (LGAs) in Tanzania experienced poor performance namely extensive delays and thereby exceeded initial contractual time and cost. Factors addressing project characteristics, project team players role, project resources, project procurement and external environment that caused overall project delayed are identified as preventions to the project team players from making the same mistake made by the previous delayed projects. The objectives of this study includes identifying the factors that caused poor performance of the construction projects designed and supervised by consultants in LGAs; to identify the severity of these factors and lastly to identify improvement factors in order to minimise poor performance of the construction projects in LGAs. Results shows that there were forty four (44) cause factors identified where these factors were divided into eight (8) main categories factors related to project characteristics, client, contractor, labour and material, consultant, contractual, project procurement and external environment. From the analysis the; top three factors that have the highest rank were project team leaders’ relationship with others, followed by communication system among project participants and the third was motivating skills of project team leader. The study also gives recommendations that can be used by the project stakeholders in order to reduce poor performance of the construction projects in the local construction industry. These include evaluations of specific type of construction projects to cutomise their reasons for poor performance.