Theses and Dissertations (Construction, Economics and Management)

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    Incorporating value management in public sector project delivery processes: The case of the Infrastructure Delivery Management System
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Sithole, Sithela Bridget; Root, David
    The construction sector is mostly a contentious issue especially when economic growth depends on the delivery of infrastructure. Within the sector, the infrastructure delivery system is a vital component in the delivery of physical infrastructure to support the economic and social outcomes of government. Having an effective public sector delivery system requires regulations, policies and standards that reflect the values of government and wider society. However, the inability to manage the delivery of infrastructure within the estimated budget while ensuring the clients receive value for money is a pervasive problem of the South African public sector with public sector projects often exceeding budgets and failing to deliver value for money. In response, the South African government has introduced an Infrastructure Delivery Management System (IDMS) seeking to standardise the infrastructure delivery management process to try and deal with some of the challenges experienced in the delivery of infrastructure. However, Value Management (VM) has long been established as a systematic way to enhance value for money and international practice frequently has VM practice embedded within the county’s infrastructure delivery systems. This study seeks to explore whether or how VM has been incorporated within the IDMS process and whether the incorporation of VM into the IDMS is something that was considered by the designers of the IDMS process. The study adopts a mixed methods research methodological approach. The primary data was collected through questionnaires which were distributed to the targeted population involved in the development of the IDMS policy and strategy within government. The questionnaire requested respondents to rank the factors hindering the incorporation of VM within the Infrastructure Delivery Management System (IDMS). This was then followed up by in-depth interviews with selected respondents to understand the thinking behind the extent to which IDMS incorporates VM IDMS. Overall, the findings demonstrated that there is limited knowledge and understanding of VM as an application that delivers quality and sustainable products and outputs with a cost-benefit and within the required timeframes within the IDMS. The conclusion that can be drawn from this is that the introduction of the IDMS missed an opportunity to embed VM practice and thus its likely effectiveness in ensuring value for money for the taxpayer is limited.
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    Liberal peacebuilding and local ownership: a case study of post-civil war Mozambique
    (2022) Hlatshwayo, Shamiso Nomsa
    The concept of local ownership and participation emerged as contextually sensitised responses to the criticisms of the liberal peace approach to issues of local legitimacy and the need for context specific peace building solutions. Given that local ownership is often viewed as an afterthought by foreign actors, it continues to be an elusive concept that is widely considered to be a necessary ingredient for durable peace; yet the very same concept has gained wide ranging criticism due to the manner in which it still relies on fundamental liberal concepts. Through a qualitative enquiry, this study explored the dilemma of the two concepts by placing it within the post-Civil War Mozambique context. There appears to be little consensus on the subject due to the role the United Nations Operation in Mozambique (UNOMOZ) played in ending hostilities and ensuring the first multi-party elections. Thus, the mission is regarded as having been successful in those areas by garnering an acceptable level of local buy-in due to the peaceful nature of the first elections and the relative peace that the country has maintained since the UNOMOZ exit. Thus in terms of the research question, it is clear that Mozambique highlights the complexity of the liberal peacebuilding and local ownership debate, thus requiring a nuanced approach where both concepts are approached with a high level of objectivity. The study found that UNOMOZ can be said to have been successful in its ability to secure peace and cultivate equitable governance structures, even though they were isolated to a specific elite. However when taking the local ownership dimension of the debate, UNOMOZ’s limited mandate and time constraints rendered it to be a process that entered the country with a cultural blind spot which by design excluded locals and eventually rendered them as essentially disempowered pawns in the reproduction of power structures that continue to limit wide spread, equitable civic participation.