PROJECT LEADERSHIP AND PERFORMANCE OF ROAD INFRASTRUCTURAL PROJECTS IN NAIROBI COUNTY, KENYA:

Abstract

Kenya Construction market is to record 9.5% growth by year 2025 and remain a growth outperformer in Sub-Sahara Africa. This positive outlook has brought about tremendous market growth in infrastructural projects. Government has spent substantial amount in infrastructure alongside foreign investment which has put high debt burden on the government threatening the pace of infrastructure development and dent investor confidence in the market. This has posed a lot of challenges to the leadership as they try to balance the high debt and accomplishment of ‘the Big4’ agenda. The performance of infrastructural projects however, has not shown much fruits as out of 177,800 kilometers of road networks in Kenya, only about 16,902 (9.5%) kilometers is paved with the rest unpaved. In an effort to deal with the challenges, leaders have introduced toll roads with private sector participation on various roads networks to raise funds for infrastructural development of roads, maintenance of the existing roads, improve public commuters’ services and ease congestion. This study investigates relationship between project leadership and performance of road infrastructural projects in Nairobi County, Kenya. Positivism philosophy informed the study and cross-sectional descriptive research design was adopted. The study targeted 20 road projects under Kenya Urban Roads Authority within Nairobi County and the respondents were projects contractors and projects engineers. Questionnaire was administered through emails. Reliability was tested using Cronbach Alpha. Diagnostics test (normality and multicollinearity test) for Ordinary Least Squares were carried. Data analysis involved descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation), correlation coefficient and multiple regression analysis. The study found that project leadership influenced projects performance. The study recommended that there is a need for the government to come up with support mechanisms for the roads and accountability mechanism to ensure ethical practices among the project leaders.