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Ogbeifun, E, Mbohwa, C and Pretorius, J H C (2018) Fragmentation of Capital Development Projects: A Tool for Job Creation and Skill Development. In: Gorse, C and Neilson, C J (Eds.), Proceedings 34th Annual ARCOM Conference, 3-5 September 2018, Queen’s University, Belfast, UK. Association of Researchers in Construction Management, 707–716.
- Type: Conference Proceedings
- Keywords: Employment opportunities, Fragmentation of mega projects, Skill development, Technical personnel, Unemployment
- ISBN/ISSN: 978-0-9955463-2-5
- URL: http://www.arcom.ac.uk/-docs/proceedings/911ae2201bb75479596f607f3f89e63a.pdf
- Abstract:
Unemployment in developing economies generally and the built environment professionals deserves attention and pragmatic attention. In the same vein, unemployment has negative influence on skill acquisition of graduates from the built environment professions. Advocates of relationship-based procurement system, over the traditional procurement system, lay emphasis on timely delivery of capital projects, with high quality and reasonable cost, but give less consideration to the need for reasonable employment to the teeming population of unemployed youths. Relating this topic to the theme of this conference: “Productive Relationship: Balancing Fragmentation and Integration”, we suggest the use of a variant of the traditional method of project procurement which focuses on the fragmentation of mega capital projects into smaller lots and using multiple contractors, instead of a single contractor. This concept, appropriately managed, can be used as a tool to ameliorate the problem of unemployment and skill development. This research adopted a comparative methodology, where the human capital employed, at the tactical level of leadership, in a fragmented mega project, which engaged multiple contractors, was compared to the human capacity in a similar position in a capital development which employed a single contractor. The findings revealed that the fragmented mega project had seven lots and each lot had at least three built environment professionals (engineers, builders, architects and quantity surveyors) at the tactical level of leadership, resulting in at least twenty-one employment opportunities. Comparatively, the similar mega project executed through the single contractor had one set of the built environment professionals (a project manager, electrical engineer, structural engineer, builder, quantity surveyor, and architect), which is about the ratio of 3:1. Thus fragmentation of capital development projects can be used as a valuable tool for job creation and skill development.