Performance drivers of the engineering consulting firms in Tanzania

Worldwide, the construction industry is volatile, highly competitive and facing a lot of challenges. It is therefore critical for the key players in the construction industry, especially engineering consulting (EC) firms to continuously improve their performance in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. EC firms need to focus on performance measures especially those drivers of performance improvement in line with their strategic objectives. However, this study has established that, many EC firms do not focus on such measures. This is clearly evident in the performance of EC firms even in the way they access consulting assignment through competition.The study aimed at establishing performance drivers by analysing the pre-selection competitive performance of 135 EC firms from secondary data collected from ten (10) Technical Proposal Evaluation Reports (TPERs) of the selected engineering projects implemented in Tanzania recently. A pre-selection framework consisting of stage I and stage II was used. Evaluation factors for these stages were used to derive the performance drivers for improvement. Performance drivers such as application of standard proposal forms, submission of legal status documents, power of attorney, financial information and firms qualifications (for stage I) and professional staffs, technical approach and methodology, organizational and staffing, work plan, organization capability and experience (for stage II) were developed. ISHIKAWA diagram was used to present these drivers with the overall performance strategy.