Improving Determinant Factors to Facilitate Construction Industry Development in Ethiopia

Abstract

Facilitating construction industry development is important to maximize its newlinecontribution to national development. It is even much more important in developing newlinecountries considering that higher portion of their annual budget goes for infrastructure newlinedevelopment and the industry faces more challenges. This study has focused on newlinedeveloping improvement frameworks for manpower development, enhancing newlinecompetitiveness and harmonized industry practice which were identified as recurring newlinefactors affecting Ethiopian construction industry so as to facilitate development of the newlineindustry. The objectives set include understanding the factors (their nature and newlineinterrelationship with the business environment), challenges of the industry, newlineimprovement of the factors and key performance indicators for monitoring and newlinetracking the improvement. newlineThe study first developed a conceptual framework and categorized the variables newlineaffecting the determinant factors based on their presumed sources. Mixed methods newlineapproach was adopted for data collection. Quantitative data was collected through newlinequestionnaire survey while semi-structured interview and document analysis were newlineused to obtain the qualitative data. The findings indicate that the factors and newlinecharacteristics of the business environment are mutually interdependent. The major newlinechallenges identified from their respective sources were; construction industry newlinedevelopment policy implementation and corruption from role of government, weak newlinecapacity of contractors and consultants from resource related variables, lack of newlinecollaboration and professionalism from nature of the industry and lack of newlinebenchmarking construction industry development practice from industryand#8223;s vision for newlinedevelopment. Based on the improvement assessment of the factors, improvement newlineframeworks and key performance indicators were developed. It was found that newlineimprovement of the industry needs strengthening the existing institutions for effective newlinecoordination, aligning the applicable regulatory tools with industry