Project Management Practices influence on performance of Maternal Health Service Infrastructure Projects in Homabay County, Kenya

Abstract

Maternal and Child Health indicators are still markedly poor in the content of Africa. As part of mitigation measures, the Government of Kenya introduced free maternal health services in 2013 aimed at improving the poor indicators. The expected demand for services needed to go in tandem with expansion of related infrastructure since much of maternal health services are infrastructure or facility-dependent. Infrastructure project implementation need sound management practices in order to realize intended performance.  It is against this background that this study was carried out. The general objective of the study was to determine Project Management Practices Influence on Performance of Maternal Health service infrastructure projects in Homabay County. Cross-sectional descriptive survey design was used with a target population of 122 key healthcare staffs, county officials managing maternal health in the county and Community Health Workers as community representatives.  Stratified random sampling, purposive and simple random samplings were used to arrive at sample population, resulting into a sample size of 93 respondents as unit of observation. The unit of analysis was maternal health service projects in 20 health facilities. Self-administered questionnaires were used for data collection. A pilot study was conducted on 10% of the target population to determine the reliability and validity of the instrument. Quantitative data was generated from the closed-ended questions. SPSS version 19 and Stata 15.1 were used to analyze the quantitative data. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze data and presentation made using graphs and tables. The key findings revealed that the four project management practices namely stakeholder participation, project funding, project leadership and monitoring had positive and significant relationship with, and therefore influenced, free maternal health service infrastructure project performance in Homabay county. The study concluded that by increasing stakeholder participation, project funding, project leadership by project monitoring would have positive and significant increase in project performance. The study recommended meaningful identification and engagement stakeholders; utilization of project funding be used according to project drawn plans; building and empowerment of teams by project managers, and identification of appropriate tools and techniques that are applicable in monitoring projects. Directions for further studies were suggested based on the outcomes of the study.

Key Words: Project Leadership, Monitoring, Project Funding, Stakeholder Participation, Maternal Health Project