Abstract
The poor economic efficiency of construction projects worldwide, has proven to be an insurmountable problem for the industry. Also, nowadays, construction projects are increasingly becoming more complex, thereby, stressing even more on time, quality and cost. This generally leads to a much wider discrepancy between the estimated cost and actual cost of the project, overall. The onus of this falls on the feasibility process. The review of the literature to date, carried out in this study, indicates that feasibility is deemed as a process which generally spans over from initiation through conceptual and detailed design to planning and scheme of works. No study has been found which takes the span of the feasibility up to the handover stage of a construction cycle. This study focuses on the dimensions, scope, and implications of a conventional feasibility process and proposes a conceptual model to enhance beyond its typical framework. This model is developed following the data empirically collected from project management experts in the construction industry. The data was analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively to identify the most significant challenges in the way of effective and efficient feasibility exercises, which includes varying aspects of lack of communication. Furthermore, PMBOK and Prince2 approaches (two new, fast growing concepts of project management) are integrated innovatively for the first time specifically in the context of feasibility science. This way, the study produces an innovative conceptual model of feasibility by expanding its boundaries beyond and above the conventional limitations and also strongly suggesting that a feasibility process needs to be more iterative than it has typically been. This can improve the productivity (both efficiency and effectiveness) of a feasibility process.
