A study of the cost planning strategies adopted by project managers in real estate projects

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Date
2021-06-29
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Abstract
The amount of investments and participation of stakeholders in Real Estate building projects is high, hence cost planning process is more complex and has various stages. Therefore, in Real Estate projects there are countless problems of cost overruns. The cost of building a house, however, is directly related to final selling rates. Eventually, the price level of real estate houses becomes very costly and the level of project execution is affected by low patronage. Hence effective cost planning is key in Real Estate construction projects. Therefore, the study aimed at exploring the cost planning strategies used by project managers in the Real Estate Sector in Ghana. The study had three (3) objectives which were to determine the cost planning strategies used by project managers in real estate projects in Ghana, to ascertain the challenges faced by project managers in cost planning in real estate projects in Ghana and to identify the significant strategies that can be adopted by project managers to improve cost planning in real estate projects in Ghana. The study adopted a quantitative research method and thus, a structured questionnaire was developed and distributed to seventy-five (75) respondents and fiftysix (56) were retrieved for the analysis. The collected data was coded and entered into the Statistical Package of Social Scientist (SPSS) version 20, by using mean score ranking and standard deviation tools. With the first objective, it was realized that, the most significant cost planning strategy was elemental cost planning. The second ranked significant cost planning strategy was comparative cost planning. The third ranked cost planning strategy was the cubic method. All the standard deviation values were below one (1) which depicts a low variability between the responses given by the respondents. With the second objective, it was realized that, the most significant challenges were inexperienced project manager. This was followed by unscientific cost planning process and high interest rates on funds from financial institutions. With the third objective, it was realized that, the most significant strategy to improve cost planning was the decrease the dependency on financial institutions for funds. The second ranked significant strategy was adoption of suitable procurement system for specific contract. The third most significant strategy was a clear definition of the scope of a project. From the findings, it was recommended that, project managers must select adequately skilled cost planning personnel to aid in the cost planning process and project managers must try to keep accurate data on cost in other to enhance their cost planning.
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A thesis submitted to the Department of Construction Technology and Management, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi in partial fulfilment of the requirements for Degree of Master of Science in Construction Management.
Keywords
Cost planning, Real Estate
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