Improving the achievement of value for money in construction procurement under the Nigerian Public Procurement Act (2007)

In 2007, the Nigerian legislative arm of government enacted an Act of Parliament known as the Public Procurement Act (PPA 2007) to govern the public-sector procurements. The PPA (2007) amongst other objectives, aims to achieve value for money on government procurements. However, opinions from the existing body of knowledge suggest that the implementation of PPA (2007) on public construction procurements over the years has achieved little in terms of value for money as envisioned. Also, literature further reveals, that the implementation of the PPA (2007) is faced with many challenges that mitigate its effective implementation. What is not evident, however, is whether these challenges are the causation factors limiting the achievement of value for money. Similarly, the extent of these challenges on a given project appears unknown. This is because the existing body of knowledge on the problem lack in-depth qualitative understanding of why this problem is occurring and how it may be improved. Therefore, adopting a qualitative research method design, and following a case study strategy, this study investigated the barriers to the achievement of value for money on 3 recently completed public sector construction projects. Data were collected using a semi-structured in-depth interview of 18 project participants who were operationally responsible for procuring the projects, targeting their reflections, experiences, and opinions on the projects. Analysis of interview data was carried out through thematic content analysis, with the aid of Nvivo 11 for Mac software. The study found that the case projects were viewed to have achieved a limited scope of value for money by the sampled participants mainly due to six reasons. These are the projects’ prolongation, cost escalation, variations in scope, facility management difficulties, inefficient project implementation process and poor-quality of construction. A total of 21 causal factors were identified to be responsible for these barriers to the achievement of a wider scope of value for money on the projects. Preventive measures for addressing these causal factors were subsequently developed, drawing on lessons from the case projects and opinions of a panel of Experts via a Delphi survey. By mitigating these causal factors, the study posits that a wider scope of value for money could be achieved on future public construction procurements