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Studies focusing on the growth of indigenous construction firms (ICFs) are getting dated, and unreflective of recent policy changes in developing countries. This study sought to analyze critical barriers to the growth of ICFs and obtain an unsupervised parsimonious grouping of the barriers for policy improvements.

A mix of quantitative and qualitative research methods was adopted for the study. ICFs in Nigeria were cross-sectionally surveyed based on a set of firm growth barriers obtained from literature and refined by focus group discussion. Descriptive (means, standard deviations, percentages) and inferential (Kruskal-Wallice and Mann-Whitney U test) statistics were used in the analyses of the data. Factor analysis was used to group the variables.

Results showed that “declining” ICFs are more negatively impacted by low construction mechanization/use of labor intensive methods, inadequate geographical reach of operations, and inadequate flow of jobs/low demand than “stunted” and “growing” ICFs. The three main domains of critical barriers to the growth of ICFs were identified in descending order of importance as low patronage, difficulty accessing funds, and business management incapacity.

The study recommends improvements in access to funds for ICFs by increasing the percentage of advance payments, and creating a pool of equipment for easy hire by ICFs. ICFs are advised to seek information on tendering opportunities outside their regions of domicile in order to increase their patronage.

This study reveals differences in the impacts of growth barriers on ICFs at different growth levels. This study also clarifies persisting barriers to the growth of ICFs [primarily construction micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs)] from a developing country perspective using a longer list of variables.

To receive a satisfactory consultancy service, a construction client must first select suitable consultants. While numerous criteria for the selection of construction consultants have been suggested in the literature, their influence on client satisfaction has hardly been statistically established. This study aimed to reduce the criteria for the selection of construction consultants into a more manageable set of fewer factors and ascertain the influence of the factors on client satisfaction.

Data were gathered through a purposively administered cross-sectional survey of public sector clients in Nigeria. Analyzes were done using relative importance index, factor analysis and multiple regression analysis.

The results proved that the criteria for the selection of consultants can, in the order of decreasing influence on client satisfaction, be grouped into service delivery approach (SDA), relationship with the client, the caliber of personnel, firm reputation and firm certification. However, SDA is more influential on client satisfaction. All the factors were found to have significant statistical effects on clients’ overall satisfaction with consultancy services.

The study demonstrates the extent to which construction consultant selection criteria are relevant to client satisfaction. It shows that SDA is the most important predictor of clients’ satisfaction with consultancy services. The results are helpful for grouping consultant selection criteria in future studies, and in guiding clients on the weights to assign to consultant selection criteria during tender evaluation.

Globally, road projects are notorious for riskiness, which often results in cost overruns. In developing countries, these risks are amplified by economic instabilities and institutional failures. Majority of road projects in these countries are awarded to notedly inept indigenous contractors. Currently, research on the relationship between risks and cost performance of road projects has predominantly focussed on the client’s perspective. Effects of risks on contractors’ cost performance (profit) are inadequately investigated in literature. The purpose of this paper is to determine the relationship between direct risks and cost performance of road projects by indigenous contractors of developing countries from the contractors’ perspective.

The multivariate structural equation modelling technique was used to analyse purposively obtained data from indigenous contractors that recently completed road projects in Nigeria.

It was observed that a significant positive relationship exists between the aggregate project risk, i.e. project risk index of cost (PRIC) and cost performance of the projects. Significant positive relationships were also found to exist between identified cost risk centres and PRIC and between risk factors and cost risk centres. The risk centre site environment and location contributes the most to PRIC.

Indigenous contractors of developing countries are to analyse the identified risk factors and centres prior to bidding for road projects and carefully manage them during project execution.

Future studies of risks in road project should aim to obtain project risk indices of costs for the projects.

Globally, corruption and unethical practices are blamed for financial leakages in construction procurement processes. In literature, there are very few studies that have sought to unravel the connectedness between the ethical and cost performances of projects. This paper aims to report findings on the relationship between unethical tendering practices and cost performance of projects in the Nigerian public sector.

A survey of participants in 119 public projects in Nigeria was conducted. Noting the infrequent use of canonical correlation in construction studies, this study made use of the technique in identifying the significant unethical tendering practices that affect the cost performance of projects.

Findings include three contractor-related variables: C1: Competitors offer bribes to gain access to confidential tendering information, C2: Competitors overstating their capacity, experience and qualification to secure construction contracts, C3: The same owner(s) use different firms to tender for the same project; and four clients/consultants-related variables: T5: Client divulging more information to preferred bidder, T9: Project requirements overstated or tailored to fit a preferred bidder, T14: Criteria for selecting winner not made public, E1: Chief executive of client organization intervenes in tender evaluation and helps his/her preferred tenderer win the contract affect the cost performance of projects.

Chief executives of procuring entities should no longer act as the chairpersons of their organisations’ tenders boards. This role should be given to reputable members of the core construction professional bodies.

This study links ethical performance of projects to their cost performance using the canonical correlation technique.