AN APPRAISAL OF SOFT SKILLS REQUIRED FOR SUCCESSFUL PROJECT MANAGEMENT OF CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS

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Department of Environmental Design

ABSTRACT
Modern research has drawn the world’s attention towards the project manager’s soft skills as cardinal aspects of success in any project, even though the society have become more project–oriented with large volumes in project works being done by organizations, “project results continue to disappoint stakeholders”, as such, prior research has paid little attention to the Construction Professionals(CPs) soft skills to assist in successful delivery of projects, soft skills have been recognized as critical competences of project management professionals by various studies. However, most of these studies are conceptual in nature which provided little empirical data. The soft skills required for successful implementation of project management (pm) and the extent to which project managers possess these soft skills are still not known. This study aimed at appraising soft skills required for successful Project Management of construction projects. This study adopted quantitative approach and utilized questionnaire survey for data collection; this study also employed the Delphi survey for establishing the soft skills required for successful project delivery. A total of 360 questionnaires were sent out to CPs and 276 valid responses were retrieved which represent 76.66% response rate. For the two-round Delphi survey involving PMs, 22 experts were identified and contacted, but only 11 participated. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and correlation analysis. The results show that CPs possess these soft skills in varying proportions, ranking high on interpersonal skills and motivation skills but low on cognitive skills, experts through Delphi survey revealed the most important soft skills to be leadership, communication and teamwork while cognitive skills is the most required skills for performing the 3 categories of activities the project manager performs through the project life cycle. The quantitative effect of soft skills on project activities was found to be statistically significant after conducting analysis on data obtained from surveys. Therefore, with the empirical evidence, this study confirmed that soft skills of Construction practitioners significantly contribute to project success in the construction industry, Soft skills of project management professionals are necessary for successful project delivery, in conclusion from the practical perspective, this study highlighted a list of critical soft skills that project management professionals need to grasp, more trainings and resources should be made available for developing project management professionals’ cognitive skills due to its high demand for project activities and influence on project success.