Comparative Study of Multi Prime and Single Prime Contracting Performance in Large Road Construction Project in Kenya

Abstract

This study explored the performance difference between Single-prime and Multi prime contracting methods in terms of cost, quality, timeliness, and overall xi performance as they are used in road construction in Nairobi City County. The study employed a comparative primary cross-sectional study with primary data collection using a semi-structured Likert-scaled questionnaire to collect data from professionals who have been involved in both contracting methods in roads construction in the County over the past 10 years. The study employed purposive and snowball sampling to select the professionals who were in active road construction projects in the county and professionals who had been involved in roads construction in Nairobi City County in the past ten years. The Study tool was tested for reliability and found to meet internal consistency requirements. The analysis of construction costs revealed a statistically significant difference between single prime and multi-prime (p = 0.006), suggesting that single prime projects costed slightly higher. The analysis also indicated no statistically significant difference in project timelines between the two contracting methods (U = 704.000, z = -1.208, p = 0.227). However, the higher mean rank for Multi-prime (45.79) compared to Single-prime (39.37) suggests longer time in Multi prime projects. A statistically significant difference was observed in the quality of project output between Single-prime and Multi-prime contracting methods (p = 0.002). The significantly higher mean rank for Single-prime (38.91) compared to Multi prime (46.46) (p=0002) indicates that Multi-prime contracting is associated with higher quality project outputs. The difference in overall contract performance between the two methods was statistically significant (p = 0.019). Notably, despite the seemingly lower quality output, Multi-prime contracting showed a slightly higher mean rank (45.87) compared to Single-prime (39.32) in overall performance. The result suggests that single-prime contracting may actually be associated with marginally higher costs, lower quality, but shorter completion time, possibly due to the prime contractor's markup on subcontractor work. This study concludes that Multi-primes preforms better than Single-prime contracting methods in terms of cost and overall performance in large and complex road construction projects in Nairobi City County-Kenya Nairobi City County where a lot more technical expertise may be required.