Download This PaperFactors Influencing Implementation of Partnership-Funded Projects At Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (KETRACO) In Kenya
American Based Research Journal, Vol. 8 Issue 04, April 2019
19 Pages Posted: 21 May 2020
Date Written: April 1, 2019
Abstract
Electricity transmission infrastructure and associated substations in Kenya are the most important assets any country can have as it aid in terms of evacuation of power from points of generation either by Kenya Electricity Generation company(KENGEN) or Geothermal Development Company (GDC) to points of off-take for purposes of access to the electricity by locals in collaboration with Kenya Power (KP), system reinforcements of the existing grid, regional interconnections that enables Kenya to do power trade with other countries in East and Central Africa etc. Availability of power is essential especially now that Kenyas’ economy needs it as a prerequisite in its quest to fulfill one of the big four agenda of Industrialization. The sole government organization that is mandated to carry out the planning, designing, constructing, owning and maintaining the transmission infrastructure is Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (KETRACO) and it has considerably done well in delivering the projects. However, the implementation of the said projects have had a fair share of challenges and criticism over its failure to start a project, delays to start, taking extremely longer times to complete a project, objection by the community affected by the project, contractors pulling out from the project, overhead charges/penalties by the contractors which caused partners to hold funds until their conditions are met and failure by the organization to have sound implementation team in the project, which have impacted negatively on projects progress. The general objective of the study is to establish the factors influencing the implementation of project management in Partnership-funded projects at KETRACO. This was done by looking at Influence of Project Planning, Stakeholders’ Involvement, Technical Skills of the project implementation team and Management Leadership of the projects. A descriptive research design was used. The target population was all the on-going transmission lines and associated Substations projects by Kenya Electricity Transmission Company in Kenya with an accessible population that comprised of 19 project managers and 25 project engineers and 10 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) facility heads. A census approach was utilized thus the study had 54 respondents. A pilot study was conducted to test the validity and reliability of data collection instrument. Data was collected through questionnaires and interviews. Questionnaires were used to collect data from project managers and engineers whereas interviews were used for community facility heads. Out of the 54 respondents targeted by the study 45 responded achieving response rate of 83.3%. The findings revealed that project planning, stakeholders’ involvement and management leadership had positive and statistically significance influence on the implementation of project management before and after incorporating moderating variable. Technical skills had positive but statistically insignificance influence on the implementation of project management before and after incorporating moderating variable. The study recommended that project planning should start at initial stage of concept development where the team should come up with master plan which needs to be reviewed regularly. In addition, policies should be put in place to ensure that stakeholders are involved in all projects developments and locals are given opportunities to actively participate in activities that may not require technical skills. The study further recommends that future researchers might as well adopt a case study research design for other sector other than energy sector that would further add value in understanding the factors affecting the implementation of partnership-funded projects.
Keywords: Project Planning, Stakeholder Involvement, Management Leadership, Technical Skills, Partnership-funded Projects Implementation
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