The impact of financial benefits on the timeous completion of projects
Abstract
There is a long history of projects going over budget and exceeding the planned time limits across a wide range of industries. Due to the nature of the project work environment, contract workers are often only required on a project for a limited amount of time, usually for the time limit of the project. The number of workers required during a project is too many to employ permanently when there are no projects running, and as a result, these workers tend to become unemployed once a project ends, unless they obtain permanent employment, or until such time that a new project starts and they are again employed on the new or different project. During projects run in the South African Power Generation Industry, workers receive a salary for the duration of a project as well as other fringe benefits apart from their regular salary in the form of daily allowances called 'per diems', or subsistence allowances. These subsistence allowances often take the form of, for example, a Living out Allowance (LOA). Contract workers also get paid overtime during the project, especially when the work that needs to be done is critical, or when the project's allocated time over-runs. Collectively, all of these are referred to as financial benefits. The purpose of this dissertation is to determine whether the method of payment to contract workers on projects and the receiving of fringe benefits in the form of subsistence allowances and overtime, has an impact on the time a project takes to complete. The idea is to identify whether workers and the payment method, together with fringe benefits, are contributors to delays experienced on projects. The reasoning behind this is that the continuous payment forms can serve as a motivation to be counter-productive and inefficient, with the goal of extending the time limits of the project, to gain more financial advantages in the form of a continuous salary and being employed for longer, as well as fringe benefits in the form of overtime, subsistence allowances and other salary top-ups. Furthermore, recommendations into whether the approach to the payment system requires reconsideration and possible changes are made, and consider given as to how this can be accomplished.