Improving Determinant Factors to Facilitate Construction Industry Development in Ethiopia

Abstract

Facilitating construction industry development is important to maximize its contribution to national development. It is even much more important in developing countries considering that higher portion of their annual budget goes for infrastructure development and the industry faces more challenges. This study has focused on developing improvement frameworks for manpower development, enhancing competitiveness and harmonized industry practice which were identified as recurring factors affecting Ethiopian construction industry so as to facilitate development of the industry. The objectives set include understanding the factors (their nature and interrelationship with the business environment), challenges of the industry, improvement of the factors and key performance indicators for monitoring and tracking the improvement. The study first developed a conceptual framework and categorized the variables affecting the determinant factors based on their presumed sources. Mixed methods approach was adopted for data collection. Quantitative data was collected through questionnaire survey while semi-structured interview and document analysis were used to obtain the qualitative data. The findings indicate that the factors and characteristics of the business environment are mutually interdependent. The major challenges identified from their respective sources were; construction industry development policy implementation and corruption from role of government, weak capacity of contractors and consultants from resource related variables, lack of collaboration and professionalism from nature of the industry and lack of benchmarking construction industry development practice from industry‟s vision for development. Based on the improvement assessment of the factors, improvement frameworks and key performance indicators were developed. It was found that improvement of the industry needs strengthening the existing institutions for effective coordination, aligning the applicable regulatory tools with industry specific development strategies and establishing some implementation systems. Though the study focus is context specific the findings could be extended to other similar developing countries.