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Infrastructure Delivery Systems: An Organisational Viability Perspective

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Infrastructure Delivery Systems

Part of the book series: Management in the Built Environment ((MABUEN))

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Abstract

Advocates have continued to lament the inability of infrastructure investments in those climes to contribute to socio-economic upliftment for most of the populace. Previous studies have attributed this deficiency to improper planning, lack of relevant skills and finance, poor regulation, etc. These studies have proposed solutions, but these solutions remain at best, perfunctory as the challenges persist. One area that has been consistently overlooked is the absence of a real-time, monitoring and evaluation system entrenched within the infrastructure delivery system to provide for self-governance within the system. The process of infrastructure procurement and delivery takes place over an extensive duration. Often, monitoring and evaluation as well as an appraisal of the system’s performance is carried out upon commissioning and close out of the project. Indeed, this is considered problematic. In this chapter, a conceptual framework for performing real-time monitoring and evaluation, process control and co-ordination has been proposed. This framework is predicated on the concept of systems viability. As such, the viable systems model (VSM) is deployed towards framework development. The advantages of the VSM as well as its utility in providing a tool for diagnosing infrastructure delivery systems is highlighted in this chapter. Also, the component parts of an infrastructure delivery system, the relationship between these parts and, the influence of the nature of these relationships on the performance of the delivery systems vis-à-vis local content development policies (LCDP) implementation is discussed in more detail in the chapter.

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Awuzie, B.O., McDermott, P. (2019). Infrastructure Delivery Systems: An Organisational Viability Perspective. In: Infrastructure Delivery Systems. Management in the Built Environment. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7291-9_3

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