Budget and Schedule Success for Small Capital-Facility Projects

Abstract

The project management environment of small capital projects is unique in many ways. One unique aspect is the total administrative burden they place on resources for approvals, reviews, and execution relative to the overall value of the capital works program. Administratively, many organizations follow a prescribed approval process for all capital project expenditures regardless of size. For these organizations, small capital projects constitute 80% of the projects executed per year but only account for approximately 16% of the capital projects’ budget expenditures. The opportunity to improve organizational performance through more effective project execution on small capital projects could provide substantial savings within individual small capital-project programs. This paper reports on data collected from active small project-program personnel as well as project success factors identified in the literature. By means of analysis and comparison between the data collected and the project success factors identified in the literature, a comprehensive list of small-project success factors was developed. Sixteen factors were identified from project success factors listed by various authors in project management literature. These factors are used as a baseline for evaluating the findings from a questionnaire and interview process conducted with a diverse group of project management personnel. The paper concludes that the factors on small projects are not unlike those on large projects. The key differences noted were related to the frequency of process implementation, which affects the timing and execution of the project work phases for small projects. The area holding the greatest potential for performance improvement for small projects is the front-end planning process.