4 coms and the roadblocks to the success of construction project delivery in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

Abstract

Project management involves an application of processes, methods, knowledge, skills and experience to achieve project objectives and it plays important role in the successful completion of construction projects. The project is deemed as successful if it achieves the objectives according to their acceptance criteria, within an agreed timescale and budget. As projects are separate to business-as-usual activities, it requires people to come together temporarily to focus on specific project objectives thus some clients opt to employ project manager in ensuring the successful delivery of the project. This paper explores the role of 4COMs in ensuring the success of the project and highlight efforts made by Universiti Teknologi Malaysia to embedded the 4 COMs in the undertaking of its massive campus development. Based on real projects, the issues in 4COM quadrants are identified and analyzed. Although comfort seems to be less of issue in UTM’s projects undertaking, the most common and crucial issues in project management are competence and commitment of consultants in performing their professional obligations. The inability to deliver the expected duties reasonably proved that competence and commitment should be one of the criteria for the selection of consultants in the future project. The combination of hard or technical skills and the human relation skills (competence and commitment) and the synergy from this significantly determine the success of the project.