Advances in Environmental Biology Review

Advances in Environmental Biology, 8(22) November 2014, Pages: 103-107
AENSI Journals
Advances in Environmental Biology
ISSN-1995-0756
EISSN-1998-1066
Journal home page: http://www.aensiweb.com/AEB/
Project Management For Post Disaster Reconstruction Project: A Literature
Review
1Dzulkarnaen
Ismail, 2Taksiah A. Majid And 3Ruhizal Roosli
1&2
School of Civil Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia
School of Housing Building and Planning, Universti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia
3
ARTICLE INFO
Article history:
Received 25 September 2014
Received in revised form
26 October 2014
Accepted 25 November 2014
Available online 31 December 2014
Keywords:
Project management, Post Disaster
Reconstruction (PDR).
ABSTRACT
Natural disasters, may cause huge loss of wealth and bring financial problems. It can be
felt in the community, city and state level, or persistently can impact an entire country.
Regions affected by disaster are often involved with a number of different and well
coordinated courses of action. Therefore, it is vital that these complex activities are well
planned, subject to thorough consultation and undertaken after effective collaboration
with the widest range of members of the affected communities. The broad objective of
this research is to analyze the problems and issues related to past project management
practice on PDR projects and to propose a Project Management methodology suitable for
the implementation of PDR project. The goal of this research is to improve project
management practice in PDR project through research output that is relevant to industry
and practice needs. The impact of the methodology on project efficiency creates
tremendous potential to enhance the value of Project Management services and project
delivery.
© 2014 AENSI Publisher All rights reserved.
To Cite This Article: Dzulkarnaen Ismail, Taksiah A. Majid And Ruhizal Roosli., Project Management For Post Disaster Reconstruction
Project: A Literature Review. Adv. Environ. Biol., 8(22), 103-107, 2014
Overview:
In recent years, natural disasters happened frequently around the globe and responsible not only for heavy loss
of lives but also create a greater property loss. According to the World bank [1], losses due to natural disasters are
20 times greater in developing countries than in developed states. In 2013 alone, as reported by EM-DAT [2], there
are 315 numbers of reported disasters, an approximately loss of US$116 billions, more than 95 millions people are
affected and 22, 279 people were killed due to natural disasters (refer Fig. 1).
Fig. 1: Annual reported economic damages and time trend from disasters: 1980-2013 [2].
The average losses reported rose from around $US50 billion a year in the 1980s to almost $US200 billion a
year in the past decade, totaling $US3.8 trillion [3]. Disaster impacts may include loss of life, injury, disease and
other negative effects on human physical, mental and social wellbeing, together with damage to property,
destruction of assets [4], loss of services, social and economic disruption, and environmental degradation [5], [6].
Natural disaster is a natural phenomenon as common understood, however, it is also a technological, economic,
societal and environmental issue [7].
The Impacts of Disaster:
Barakat stated that disasters have a greater impact on the built environment of developing countries than
industrialised ones [8]. Lindell & Prater added that the property damage caused by disaster impact causes direct
Corresponding Author: Dzulkarnaen Ismail, School of Civil Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia
E-mail: [email protected]
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Advances in Environmental Biology, 8(22) November 2014, Pages: 103-107
economic losses that can be thought of as a loss in asset value. This can be measured by the cost of repair or
replacement [4]. Post-natural disaster reconstruction is not only a good opportunity to transform the destructive
area into a sustainable community, but also a right moment to prepare for the next disaster [7], decrease their
vulnerability from disaster impacts and encourage recovery when disaster strike [4]. The affected nations that
require reconstruction after the impact of disaster should see the development as a dynamic process, and disasters
offer the opportunity to vitalize or revitalize this process, especially in the generation of local economies and the
upgrading of livelihoods and living conditions. This is relevant especially in the context of the developing nations.
Post Disaster Reconstruction (PDR):
PDR projects often dealed with uncertainties, [9], [10] and complexity [7], [11], [12] which consider one of
the most challenging tasks to be deal with. The PDR initiative is part of a sequence of four identifiable post disaster
periods: emergency, restoration, reconstruction, and betterment construction. Reconstruction should be defined,
planned, and implemented in stages [13]. Yi & Yang suggested that PDR require existing tools be adapted or new
tools to be developed to allow the specific issues and elements of post disaster reconstruction efforts to be
effectively managed and evaluated [14]. Poor plan and implementation of PDR, can create further vulnerabilities in
a disaster-affected community [15]. Planning for reconstruction from a disaster must be realistic and reflective.
Without a plan, it is impossible to predict or expect a successful recovery [7]. Each disaster had its uniqueness
during reconstruction efforts. Despite the aid assistance from the agencies, government and NGO‟s on the
development after a disaster, the amount of reconstruction projects that have been successfully completed has
remained low.
The Issues and Challenges in Post-Disaster Reconstruction(PDR):
Unlike normal construction, post-disaster reconstruction is complex, dynamic and chaotic in nature and as
such represents many challenges. The task of reconstruction necessitates a high level of coordination and a rigorous
managerial approach [16], [17]. A survey carried out by Iwai and Tabuichi [18] shows that close to 30 percent of
the total 28,017 public housing units for the evacuees of the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami
had faced delays in project delivery. Amnesty International in the report stated that four years after a massive
earthquake hit Haiti, about 170,000 homeless people caused by the tragedy are still surviving in makeshift tent
villages in dire weather and are at threat of being pulled out of the tents [19]. Reconstruction of Aceh had
experienced delays and slow in progress [20], [21], [22] that the delay had greatly affected the region's economy
and recovery [23].
Delay can cause the time overruns either ahead of the targeted date specified in the contract, or beyond the date
for delivery of the project. Distinctive cases of project failure occur when the project didn't deliver on time, under
budget and of quality expected in common with the criteria such as integration [7], financial [24], inappropriate
assessment [25], communication and coordination [15], inadequacies of resource procurement [26], ineffective
design [27], transportation [23], corruption [3], and many more (refer to Table 1). Research into past experiences
has led many authors to argue that PDR is the least successful physically visible arena of international cooperation
[28]. Therefore, integrated reconstruction management is the key to accelerate the reconstruction process and to
improve human settlement environment [7]. Project management play an importance role to ensure the
reconstruction projects completed successfully [29].
Project management success factor for PDR:
It is the Tsunamis that struck the South East Asia region on December 26th 2004 which triggered a surge in
research interest on how to improve delivery of critical aid relief projects [30]. As the incidents of natural disasters
increase, it is crucial that NGOs and other agencies involved in disaster relief manage the risk by learning as much
as possible from each disaster recovery and reconstruction process they are involved with; its successes and
failures [31], [32]. Very few researches were carried out in post-disaster reconstruction focusing on project
management [30], not alone the critical success factors (CSFs) for post-disaster reconstruction [33], [34]. Some
attempts have been made by both professional bodies and academic researchers to determine the most common
factors contributing to the poor performance and reasons for failure of some of the least successful projects.
Moe & Pathranarakul discovered that in order to complete a particular project successfully, there are ten (10)
Critical Success Factors (CSFs) must be taken into consideration through the project life cycle phases. They are as
follows [35]: effective institutional arrangement; coordination and collaboration; supportive laws and regulations;
effective information management system; competencies of managers and team members; effective consultation
with key stakeholders and target beneficiaries; effective communication mechanism; clearly defined goals and
commitments by key stakeholders; effective logistics management; sufficient mobilization and disbursement of
resources [35]. Wardak et.al. [28] added that from the research carried out, it is clear that effective community
participation is a major key to success in PDR. Affected communities have the understanding that is crucial for
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designing reconstruction projects. They likewise receive a very specific role to play in all phases of post-disaster
housing reconstruction that determines project success.
Table 1: Identified post-disaster reconstruction problems [29].
While Chang et. al [15] in her studies found out that post-disaster housing reconstruction is likely to suffer
project deficiencies in relation to the availability of resources. Inefficiencies in dealing with resource shortages in
the aftermath of a catastrophe can trigger economic and environmental impacts on the affected areas. Post-disaster
housing reconstruction with the community-based method has gathered a lot of success in the reconstruction of
many affected areas, for instance in Bam, Iran, Gujarat, and Indonesia [33]. The critical success factors (CSFs)
listed by Ophiyandri et. al [33] are: transparency and accountability; appropriate reconstruction policy/strategy;
understanding the community-based method; gathering trust from the community; facilitator capacity; good
coordination and communication; sufficient funding availability; implementer capacity; significant level of
community participation/control; involvement of all community members; successful beneficiary identification;
and government support.
Conclusion:
The research specified that post-disaster reconstruction (PDR) projects are inherently complex and therefore
acquire project management approaches to bring about higher levels of successful implementations. PDR projects
require a certain way of thinking to foster successful outcomes [36]. Despite the long durations, there is a
competing need for speed in reconstruction to satisfy pressure to achieve a fast recovery. In addition, there is a
growing need for transparency in progress and accountability to time frames that is imposed by donors, government
and other stakeholders. As stated by [29] that management of the construction procedure of PDR may be similar to
a general project, only with more emphasis on inadequate resource, quality and coordination. However, there had
been many reports on PDR problems in practice, making it necessary to systematically analyse the current PDR
research for future improvements [14]. This paper has provided a general review of PDR in the aspect of improving
the project performance by looking into critical success factors (CSFs) listed by previous authors and exposing the
most common and fundamental problems affecting project delivery performance.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors wish to acknowledge the Disaster Research Nexus (DRN) and the Universiti Sains Malaysia
(USM) for providing necessary research facilities and supervision.
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