Examining Construction and Project Management Perspectives of Project-Based Failure

Projects are distinctive, time-constrained, undertakings meant to generate benefits for their stakeholders. They are delivered by Project-based organisations (PBOs) whose various actors separately consider achievement in relation to a project's outputs, outcomes, and impact. For example, contracting organisations typically consider projects that fail to meet their principal cost and time targets as having been unsuccessful, whereas the various sponsors, customers, collaborators, and end-users may instead base their evaluation upon the ultimate operational results of these same projects. The aim was to examine the knowledge base for contrasting perspectives around project-based failure in the construction sector. This required scrutiny and analysis of the extant literature, using a systematic-type literature review approach within and across construction management (CM) and project management (PM) literature. This revealed that in PM literature, considerations of failure are often more introspective and discussed in more general terms; with its main causes being associated with the PM function itself. Whereas the CM literature instead focuses on more specific and external failures; with causes more likely attributed to the wider supply chain and contextual factors. Results can help inform the design of dedicated research instruments to help better understand the impact of failure on PBOs.