The impact of manager’s hard skills and risk management on construction project performance

Abstract

Today, construction professionals understand the complexity and everchanging nature of the construction works which continues to raise enormous challenges for managers. While risk management has been one of the major concerns of executives and professionals involved with projects today, especially after several financial crisis that shook the world in the current era. Moreover, the failur of project managers to control risks will cause a drmatic failure of many construction projects in meeting deadlines, cost and quality and project targets, where the defects of all these factors are weakening construction project performance at the end. The aim of this study is to examine the efect of project management hard skills on project performance as well as investigating the mediation role of project risk management on the association between project management hard skills and project performance. The survey has been conducted in construction projects in Oman. The methodology used in this study is a quantitative approach based on causal and correlation research strategy. The empirical results of this study showed that project management hard skills are correlated with project risk management and construction project performance. The main significance of this study is filling the gap in literature with regard to the role of risk management in construction projects in Oman as well as understanding the direct and indirect effect of hard skills of project managers in construction industry.