Unlocking critical success factors and criteria in capital projects — A perspective from the South African petrochemical industry

This research was aimed at identifying the critical success factors and criteria, as well as their importance, for each project lifecycle phase in the petrochemical industry. An extensive literature review was conducted followed by a focus group exercise to review the critical success factors and criteria. These factors and criteria were then sent via a survey questionnaire to a population of 1,035 people and the number of valid responses received back was between 103 and 139, depending on the life cycle phase. The research results indicated that there is not a unique set of factors and criteria in each phase of the project lifecycle. Some factors are considered very important in more than one project phase. The research results show that some of the factors and criteria significantly change in importance when a project moves to the next phase of execution.