Influence of Internal Stakeholder Participation on Performance of Technical Projects at Rift Valley Railways Limited

Abstract

Rail has a pivotal role in delivering a competitive and environmentally-friendly transport system, growing the economy, enhancing personal mobility and supporting social cohesion. However the performance of projects at the Rift Valley Railways continues to face challenges. It is due to these challenges in performance of technical projects at the rift valley railways that the current study investigated the influence of stakeholder participation on performance of technical projects at rift valley railways. The study specifically sought to establish the influence of stakeholder participation in project identification, project planning, project implementation and project monitoring and evaluation on performance of rift valley railways technical projects. The target population was all the employees of Rift valley railways. The study concluded that only stakeholder participation in project identification, implementation and monitoring and evaluation are positively and significantly related to performance of technical projects at RVRK implying that a unit increase in any of the factors leads to an improvement in performance of technical projects at RVRK. The findings that involvement of stakeholders in project planning, identification, implementation and monitoring and evaluation explains 66.5% led to the conclusion that stakeholders should continuously be involved in technical projects planning, identification, monitoring and evaluation as well as implementation. In as far as identification is concerned, the stakeholders should be involved in development of feasibility plans, problem analysis, appointment of project teams, carrying out project prioritization and development of terms of reference. In planning, the stakeholders should be involved in development of communication plan, development of work break down structure, development of change management strategies to be followed when implementing technical projects, development of resource accumulation mechanisms and development of quality plans for the technical projects. The study also recommends that stakeholders should be involved in project implementation activities like development of technical projects work plan, development and approving of technical projects budgets, evaluation of technical projects risks, evaluation of technical projects costs and drawing of clarity of performance standards required during implementation of technical projects at RVRK since their involvement at this phase is positively and significantly related to performance of technical projects.

Keywords: Project identification, Project planning, Project implementation, Project monitoring and evaluation, Performance of rift valley railways technical projects