Respondents’ Background

The 12 respondents interviewed were five professionals representing the public organisations, three engineering consultants representing the external private organisations working with public projects, and four contractors engaged by the public organisations (see sampling method in Section 3.5.2.1). Each respondent had over 20 years of experience working in public projects and was therefore able to provide insightful data of the current real-world scenario of disruptions in public projects. Their background is presented in Table 5.1.

Table 5.1: Background information on respondents

Experts Professional Background and Responsibilities

Expert PO1 A project manager and principal assistant director with civil and structural engineering background from the public state department. He also designs and advises on infrastructure works such as roads and bridges. He is involved mostly at the planning and design phase of the project, before the project goes to tender.

Expert PO2 Superintending officer and senior assistant director from the public state department. She has a background in civil and structural engineering and is responsible for managing and overseeing construction works on-site. She has been involved in building projects, but is currently supervising roadworks and infrastructure projects.

Expert PO3 A civil and structural engineer from the Head of Project Team (HOPT) in the main public works department’s headquarter in Kuala Lumpur. He is mainly involved in government ‘sick projects’ and acts as an advisor in recovering the projects to get back on track. He is currently dealing with many public building works, but has experience dealing with infrastructure works.

Expert PO4 A principal assistant director and civil and structural engineer from HOPT who is an expert in work scheduling. He is involved in the planning phase of the public projects. His tasks include preparing the risk management plan, and liaising with public works department’s design team in capturing the client’s brief on the project. He has experience in building works, but is currently working with consultants on Mass Rapid Transit projects. Expert PO5 A principal assistant director and project manager who represents the

public organisations during the construction phase. He ensures construction works on-site meets the expected timeline in the schedule and helps to coordinate the team on-site. He has a background in civil and structural engineering and is mainly involved in building works.

Consultant CS1 A senior civil and structural engineer from a small-sized consultant engineering firm (20 employees). She prepares design drawings for the public state department from planning to design phase and is mainly involved in roadworks. Her firm also engages specialists to assess traffic management plans for the roadworks. She assists PWD in responding to public road users’ complaints.

Consultant CS2 A civil and structural engineer from a medium-sized consultant engineering firm (more than 50 employees). She prepares design drawings for tender and consults public works department on the structural designs of the infrastructure works. She also assists public works department in acquiring land and in dealing with contractors’ enquiries on roadworks design.

Consultant CS3 A civil and structural engineer from a medium-sized family-owned consultancy (more than 50 employees). He deals mostly with the structural design of public buildings. He prepares the design drawings for public sate department during design, and also provides a quantity surveying service to estimate the design works.

Contractor CO1 A main contractor from a large construction company involved in construction, contract administration, quantity surveying, trading and training services (more than 100 employees). He has experience working in public infrastructure and building construction works, and has also worked as a sub-contractor and supplier through his company’s

Contractor CO2 A main contractor from a medium-sized construction company (more than 50 employees). His past experience includes both public and private projects, and is experienced in dealing with international projects. He is currently focusing on two public projects.

Contractor CO3 A main contractor who is also the CEO of his small company (20 employees). He directly manages his company’s finance and the construction works on-site. His company is mainly involved in government and semi-government projects (government-owned company projects).

Contractor CO4 A main contractor from a small family-owned company (less than 20 employees). The company has run for more than 20 years through his father, and has been a supplier and sub-contractor in past public projects. He is currently working as the main contractor on two public projects.

5.3 Pathogenic themes

As previously discussed in Section 3.5.2, the computer software package Nvivo (version 11) was used to conduct the content analysis. The recorded interviews were transcribed and uploaded in the software to identify the major themes from the interview data. In this case, predetermined pathogenic themes from existing literature (Busby and Hughes, 2004) were used to classify the data. The emergent theme of behaviour was also identified from the interviews, and was included in the analysis. Figure 5.1 presents the coding structure developed on the critical pathogenic influences that contribute to the occurance of supply chain disruptions in public projects.