Risk factors affecting the ability for earned value management to accurately assess the performance of infrastructure projects in Australia

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate a set of risk-related factors influencing the earned value management (EVM) concept as an assessment technique in evaluating the progress of modern sustainable infrastructure construction projects. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative research approach has been adopted for identifying risk-related factors influencing EVM concept from a literature review and through interviewing industry personnel, followed by an inductive process to form sets of key factors and their measuring items. Findings: EVM is a common method for assessing project performance. A weakness of this approach is that EVM assessment in its current form does not measure the impact of a number of project performance factors that result from the complexity of modern infrastructure construction projects, and thus does not accurately assess their impact in this performance. This paper discusses and explains a range of potential risk factors to evaluating project performance such as sustainability, stakeholder requirements, communication, procurement strategy, weather, experience of staff, site condition, design issues, financial risk, subcontractor, government requirements and material. In addition, their measuring items were identified. Practical implications: This research assists projects managers to improve the evaluation process of infrastructure construction performance by incorporating a range of factors likely to impact on that performance and which are not included in current EVM calculations. Originality/value: This research addresses the need to include in the EVM calculation a range of risk factors affecting the performance of infrastructure projects in Australia and therefore makes this calculation a more reliable tool for assessing project performance.