An analysis of the implications of resources management on building projects performance in harare and bulawayo

Construction, by virtue of its size, is a major consumer of resources. Fundamentally, resources provide the means with which project objectives are achieved. Therefore, sound project management should strive to ensure efficient utilization of labour, materials and plant. However, apart from the centrality of resources in ensuring accomplishment of project objectives, resources management remains a silent discipline of project management both in practice and theory. In this paper, qualitative and quantitative techniques are used to assess the collective effect of materials, plant and labour resources management on project cost and duration. Public and private sector projects in Harare and Bulawayo were randomly selected for the study. During the study, it was observed that on majority of the selected projects contractors had some form of resource management systems varying from informal to formal paper-based systems. However, the fact that none of the projects was within budget or time bound raises questions on their efficiency and effectiveness. This suggests that overreliance on the traditional paper-based and informal project resource management systems which cannot account for resource usage in real time is a major pitfall of the said systems. Further exacerbating the situation is a lack of genuine commitment to this cause by contractors. On the other hand, unavailability of skilled labour, shortage of materials on the local market, liquidity crunch and inflationary tendencies were identified as some of the constraints to implementing an effective site resources management system, while on a positive note, an effective resource management system will, among other benefits, enhance good business relations between contractor and client, ensure that projects are delivered on time and within cost. The study therefore recommends revision of existing legal contracting frameworks to explicitly deal with the ills of ineffective resources management and training of contractor site staff in site resources management practice.