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673

Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol.7, No.9

Publication Date: September 25, 2020

DOI:10.14738/assrj.79.8577.

Korir, J. K., Kyalo, D. N., & Mbugua, J. (2020). Community Participation in Project Closure principles and Performance of Community

Water Supply Projects in Kericho County, Kenya. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 7(9) 673-705.

Community Participation in Project Closure principles and

Performance of Community Water Supply Projects in Kericho

County, Kenya

Justus Kipkoech Korir

PhD Candidate, School Open and Distance Learning,

University of Nairobi, Kenya

Prof. Dorothy Ndunge Kyalo

Senior Lecturer, School of Open and Distance Learning,

University of Nairobi, Kenya

Dr. John Mbugua

Senior Lecturer, School of Open and Distance Learning,

University of Nairobi, Kenya

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article was to establish the extent to which community

participation in project closure principles influences the performance of

community water supply projects in Kericho county Kenya. The indicators used

included community participation in; project documentation and archiving,

procurement closure and bills settlement and project handing over and

celebration. The study adopted descriptive survey design and correlation

research design. The descriptive survey design was used to describe

characteristics of the population being studied whilst a correlational research

was used to describe the degree to which variables under the study were related.

The target population was 8357 and the sample size was 382. Out of this, 310

positively responded. The sample comprised of households and management

committee members. The research instruments included questionnaires, focus

group discussion and interview schedules. Stratified proportional sampling and

random sampling were used to collect primary qualitative and quantitative data.

The data was compiled, given codes and input into SPSS version 25 computer

program for statistical analysis and presentation. The study findings showed that

community participation in project documentation and archiving (R=0.680,

p=0.00<0.05, R2=0.461), procurement closure and bills settlement (R=0.772,

p=0.00<0.05, R2=0.595) and project handing over and celebration (R=0.746,

p=0.00<0.05, R2=0.554) are significant explanatory variables with respect to

project performance at 95% confidence level. Therefore, the study concluded

that the community should be encouraged to actively participate more during the

project closure process in order to enhance the performance of their community

water supply projects.

Key Words: Project closure, Project Performance, Community participation,

Participatory development.

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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol.7, Issue 9, September-2020

INTRODUCTION

Bringing a project to a successful closure is the dream of any project team. The project closure

process starts when the user (client) formerly accepts the project deliverables and that the project

has met the goals for which it was established [1]. Project closure simply means ending a project. It

is the closure of project activities and it includes determining whether all of the project completion

criteria has been met. The criteria includes; identifying any outstanding project activities or issues,

handing over all project deliverables and documentation to the customer, cancelling supplier

contracts and communicating the closure of the project to all stakeholders and interested parties

[2]. Closure extends to decommissioning of the project, audit report, final report and handover of

facility, reassignment of project team.

A project closure report is prepared and submitted to the customer and/or project sponsor for

approval since it the last phase of any project whereby the project outputs are handed over to the

client, contractual agreements properly taken care of and project records elicited and stored

(archived) for future reference. PMBOK (2013) summarizes project Closure as consisting of those

project activities that are performed to formally complete the project. It goes without saying that

the first key to success in project closure phase is the precise completion of all prior phases in the

life of a project including planning and implementation. Project closure is an exciting and

anticipated time for the client (customer) when the project fully meets the due date.

The primary purpose of project closure phase is to review the project completion criteria and

ensure that all of the project deliverables have been achieved as envisaged in the project objectives

document. Closure of a project can sometimes have serious consequences on the performance of

the project if not done properly [3]. Therefore, care should be taken to make sure that project

closure goes as per the plan. This means that the closure process is critical for the overall

performance of the project. Project closure also offers useful performance indicators regarding the

overall project deliverables [3]. During the project closure or completion phase, the emphasis is on

releasing the final deliverables to the customer, handing over project documentation, terminating

supplier contracts, releasing project resources, and communicating the closure of the project to all

stakeholders. The last remaining step is to conduct lessons-learned to examine what went well and

what did not. Through this type of analysis, the wisdom of experience is transferred back to the

project entity, which will help future project teams.

Water projects like any other project also goes through the project life cycle and hence must be

formerly brought to a close once all the project activities have been done. This novel idea of

involving the community in the project cycle management is slowly receiving the attention of the

project implementers in every sector including the water sub sector. It is now widely accepted in

the international development sub-sector and is currently being implemented in the vast majority

of community water supply projects and programs in sub-Saharan Africa [4]. The concept of

community participation is now recognized as the foundation of success in rural water supply

projects [4]. It has become the prevalent model for management of rural water supplies throughout

sub-Saharan Africa. According to World Bank (2004), participation is “a mechanism whereby

stakeholders influence and share control over development projects, the decisions and resource

that impact directly on them”. The concept of community participation first emerged in some parts

of Africa and Asia about 40 years ago from the colonial era approach to community development.

To the colonial rulers, the community development was a way of improving the welfare of the locals,

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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.79.8577 675

Korir, J. K., Kyalo, D. N., & Mbugua, J. (2020). Community Participation in Project Closure principles and Performance of Community Water Supply Projects

in Kericho County, Kenya. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 7(9) 673-705.

educating the local people and increasing government control through self-help projects [5].

However, this policy failed to achieve many of goals during this era, primarily because of the top- down bureaucratic approach adopted by the colonial administrators [5].

Community participation is usually more effective when the community shoulders much of the

responsibility than when public agencies seek to assess the community preferences through

surveys or public meetings [6]. In order for community participation to work, projects must include

special components. Villagers can be recruited to help in all phases of designing, implementing,

maintaining, supervising, and evaluating new water supply systems, but only if the time, effort and

money is spent to do it right. Special attention must be paid to the development of local committees

and governance structures that can adequately oversee local participation. This framework has

been largely accepted by development agencies worldwide. Therefore, Participation is an

empowering instrument to gain control of the project or initiative.

Statement of the problem

Project closure is one of the critical phases in the life of any project. However, majority of the project

management literature covers the entire project life cycle i.e., the initiation, planning and

implementation, and only a small fraction of the discussion is devoted to the termination (closure)

phase of a project yet project closure is a very important phase in the entire project cycle [7].

According to project management literature project closure should be planned, budgeted and

scheduled in the same way as the earlier phases in the project life cycle, but unfortunately it rarely

happens [8]. Even project management scholars and experts have shown recently started showing

keen interest in project closures.

Recently, project management scholars have shown more interest in project closures [9, 10] but,

there is little guidance in the project management literature on how to handle project closure more

so participatory project closure. Therefore, this paper aims to generate more understanding

regarding community participation in project closures and how it influences performance of the

project.

Water is central to humanity’s socio-economic wellbeing [11] and therefore lack of access to safe

and affordable water is a form of deprivation that threatens life and undermines human dignity

[12]. This situation has degenerated into a crisis in some countries Kenya included. This water

supply deficit among the rural populations has been attributed to water management crisis [13].

Participation of the beneficiaries has been prescribed as the solution to the crisis in the management

and performance of community water projects. Performance of Community Water Supply projects

has been identified in literature as being a product of a participatory process. However, little has

been done to determine the specific influence of community participation in the project closure on

performance of community water supply projects.

Though the performance of community water supply projects and the benefits these projects bring

to the community are some of the overriding concerns with regard to rural developments [11], the

concept of community participation in these projects has been completely ignored. Only limited

emphasis has been placed on the broad concept of public participation with little tangible results in

terms of performance. Although some studies have been done on participatory project cycle

management, not emphasis has been put into understanding the influence of project closure process