In brief, the on-time completing the World Bank-supported projects in Afghanistan within the approved budgets is difficult because of an uncertain environment and many aspects of problems. Most likely, every unexpected constraint, and implementation risks have to be compensated by accepting some additional expenditures, the amounts of which are often too large and significant. On the other hand, executive procedure of providing these additional funds may not be an easy process because of the Bank's policies, Government regulations, and deal of other concerning entities within the country. So, keeping the World Bank-supported projects in Afghanistan within their budgets or at least reducing their extra costs as much as possible, are considered a very important issue for PIUs and the government. In order to take effective decisions in this concern, first of all necessary to be identified particular problems in the area that directly or indirectly cause the projects' cost overrun; second need to be studied the nature of their causations, and finally have to be found out, and applied most suitable methods of controlling these problems.
Mr. Mohammad Sharif made a case study which primary objectives were: (1) identifying what are the significant problems that often cause the World Bank- supported projects‘ cost overrun in Afghanistan; (2) studying the reasons why these problems cause cost overrun; and (3) analyzing how to mitigate the cost overrun risks
Conclusions
1. Although within the uncertain post-conflict environment of the country, in which the construction projects are subject to be implemented different political, legal, organizational, and cultural challenges are likely to affect the sound implementation of the projects finally ending to their cost overruns, most of the identified problems either have been looking like managerial or financial types of problems, or at least arising from these two areas. It means that the project management teams have to study these issues in advance and have to set effective practical plans and strategies to deal with them. A summary of the related areas of the identified problems are given in the table below.
2. Analysis show that the main involving stakeholders of these projects along the implementation phases of the projects' life cycles were the general contractors, the related government departments, and the project implementation units as it was assumed in the conceptual framework below. The most of identified items through the objective one were related to these organizations. The consulting agencies that usually have important role in this interval can be considered either as a part of PIUs or as the general contracting units based on the related points of view. In this research those are reflected on as general contractors.
Accounting Model
(Source: http://systemizesoftware.com/databuilder.aspx)
Since the identified problems are strongly interrelated they can be linked to each other based on a hierarchy of causes and effects according to the logical framework approach of problem solving. After analyzing the case reports, and the related literatures there were found the most likely reasons for the sixteen identified problems as below:
1. The problem of lacking capable construction companies in area is due to:
- Poor technical and managerial skills of site managers and engineers; also, lack of sufficient plants, due to their poor financial capacities.
- Inadequate investigations of capacity issues in establishing a new construction company, and
- Lack of security that impacts the willingness of foreign companies to work in Afghanistan.
2. The main reasons of poor human resource capacities of Afghan construction companies are:
- Ineffective site monitoring by owner organizations
- Non realistic organizational structures of contracting companies
- Poor condition of infrastructure
- Unsafe environment of the country
- Instability of labor market
- Dependence of labor supply to particular agencies, and
- Unsafe working conditions and other de motivation factors
3. Poor financial management of contracting companies are due to:
- Missing preparation of financial plans
- Unavailability of Bank credits
- Unavailability of financial data, and
- Inadequate administration of contracts
4. Delay by contracting companies are cause because of:
- Late start, slow mobilization, late materials and components delivery
- Wrong arrangements with the related government agencies
- Job site accidents
- Missing financial commitments by the partners
- Cash flow limitations, and
- Default
5. Poor involvement of top management in site works is happened because of undertaking several projects by the contractors, or their own businesses
6. Poor contribution of government agencies in fulfilling their committed responsibilities is because of:
- Human resource issues
- Corruption
- Limited annual budgets. and
- Lack of common, and clear goals, strategies, or lack of strong commitments to it
- Bureaucratic administrative systems
7. Dual chains of command comes from:
- Inadequate leadership and ineffective approach of motivation
- Difference between the dynamic requirements of the projects, and the government, and
- Relevance of project to other sources
8. There are no adequate codes for engineering designs due to:
- Lack of a national standard or clear regulation requiring a specific system or code for engineering issues
- Less enforcement of the quality and standardization of construction, and
- Different systems of academic institutions outputs
9. Project risks are not assessed and managed, since there are:
- An extra uncertain environment, and an ongoing military and security challenges in the country
- Lack of detailed and clear risk assessment functions within the PIUs, and
- Partly involvements of project managers with the whole life cycle challenges of the projects due to their late assignments
10. Missing the hierarchy of project planning is the result of:
- Lacking realistic strategic plans in the benefiting organizations that reflect all required projects with its hierarchies and priorities
- Missing the existing strategic plans, and
- Supporting some particular and a specific intervals of the overall plans by some special random investments
11. Incompleteness of design documents are because of:
- Poor contribution of the projects' partners
- Fixed and limited budgets, and
- An ineffective coordination by the project management units
12. Inadequateness of bidding process are caused by:
- Lack of security, authority of warlords
- Corruption, and
- Lack of qualified contractors
13. Variations during the implementation phases are generated due to:
- Constructive changes
- Inadequate design
- Poor coordination arrangements by responsible groups, and
- Lack of security, or authority of warlords
14. Delay in fulfilling financial commitments is occurred because of:
- Incomplete documentation
- Inefficiency of some line departments, and
- Poor financial capacity and management of the committing parties
15. Authority of warlords in the site is due to:
- Lack of security and complete state governance, and
- Ineffective planning, and risk management
16. Inadequate weather can cause difficulties if there is either:
- Some unprecedented critical climate change, or
- The plans and schedules are not effective, and efficient.
3. Since most of the analyzed problems are interrelated through the cause and effect chains, the developed objectives also tend to be common in many cases. Consequently the proposed activities for achieving each objective even in cases of common objectives may be differed because of the natures of the original problems. It means that the various dimensions of the objectives will be supported by variety of activities subject to be performed by several agencies. The summary of the finally developed objectives that are listed in a hierarchical manner in terms of the commonness of the issue are as below:
1. Bringing the security to the country
2. Enforcement the law and regulations in entire aspects of project performance
3. Eliminating corruption from the public sector
4. Improving infrastructure development of the country
5. Full implementation of projects by Government agencies
6. Effective use of the assisted funds
7. Rebuilding the capacity of government agencies
8. Effective coordination with related agencies
9. Improvement of the quality of construction projects
10. Improvement of human resource capacity of Afghan construction companies
11. Improvement of financial viability of construction companies
12. Properly managing the implementation risks
13. Adequate planning & management of project resources
14. Enforcement of safety requirements in construction companies
15. Improving efficiency and effectiveness of monitoring systems
His thesis abstract is copied and posted.
Abstract
The World Bank-supported projects in Afghanistan that significantly contribute implementation of the country's national development strategy are often affected by cost overrun issues caused by a variety of problems in the current post-conflict environment of the state. The implementation phase; in which the several sub-components of the projects are executed in the area under direct responsibility of the government agencies, and technical consultancy of the project implementation units, are considered as a problematic stage of the projects' life cycle. A qualitative research based on case studies was designed to contribute the prevention of cost overrun problems of such projects through identifying the problem items; analyzing the causes; and proposing effective strategies for solving them. The methodology consists of determining research assumptions, data collection criteria, and developing interview forms through a literature review; preparing case reports; analyzing the cause and effect natures of the problems; converting the main causes to the objectives; and finally setting up the effective strategies for achieving them. The collected data encompassed different cost overrun cases of five construction projects in Balkh and Faryab provinces of Afghanistan under the two major "Strengthening the Higher Education" and" the National Solidarity" Programs supported by World Bank. Through the cross-case analyses were identified sixteen items concerned to the main three stakeholders such as the general contractors, the related government agencies, and the project implementation units. By structuring the cause and effect trees, there were listed out most likely causes of each problem, from which were developed the related long and short term strategies after converting them to the objectives. The long term strategies, some of which were already the parts of Afghanistan National Development Strategy were concerned to a numbers of the government agencies. Some non government agencies such as the Afghanistan Reconstruction and Development Services through which procurement of the projects are conducted, the Project Implementation Units, and the General Contracting Companies were assigned to make more detailed operational contributions in ongoing project management processes. The result of the study were a set of the identified problems causing cost overrun of the mentioned projects in Afghanistan, a comprehensive table showing the causes, the objectives and strategies of its solutions, and the contributing departments of each strategy; and separate allocation of issues to the four key stakeholders of the projects.
