Article Preview
Top1. Introduction
The oil and gas sector plays a crucial role in today's and future global energy-mix economy (OGUK, 2019). The oil and gas industry is one of the most significant industries globally in terms of projects, including operations and maintenance costs activities (Sylvester et al., 2011). In addition, these projects are characterized by the highest complexity, competition, and criticality to any country or organization around the globe (Hasan & Alhashimi, 2019). Additionally, the oil and gas industry faces several challenges during project execution to comply with the PM triangle elements: cost, time, and scope/quality/ reliability (Sefair et al., 2017). As per the Chartered Institute of Building Surveys (CIBS), 81% of oil and gas projects and 42% of engineering projects were delayed in 2013 due to PSC (Parker & Cullen, 2015). Also, Parkar & Cullen (2015) states that more than 600 projects got 85% failure of government and not-for-profit projects in several countries due to PSC. PSC phenomenon is extensively faced during the O&G project execution phase. PSC is defined as an increase in deliverables without increasing project resources or timelines (Abbasi et al., 2014; Siriram, 2019).
Accordingly, there is a need to understand procurement management-related activities (Tendering Management (TM) and CQ) key factors and Project Management (PM) critical factors to design a procurement or project strategy eliminating PSC. PSC has two main dimensions. Firstly, PSC is the uncontrolled reality of project environments as external factors (Ajmal et al., 2019; Sindi, 2018). Secondly, it can be controlled internally by procurement management. It includes managing all strategic, operational planning, policies & procedures, coordination, and decision-making related to purchasing activities of the procurement unit. Its main functions are purchasing / TM and sourcing management/ CQ (Becit & Görener, 2019).
The main reasons for PSC are due to unawareness of one side of stakeholders with changes in project requirement during the project management (PM) stage, no agreements among stakeholders or main two parties of a contract, and no risk taker, no assessment or acceptance of responsibilities of potential impacts among them (Amoatey & Anson, 2017).
Scope changes do not always become PSC, but a readiness of project scope to control such changes can lead to a project's performance (Kagogo & Steyn, 2019). Also, we need to strategize all our requirements, resources, and plans by taking the right decision at the right time at the right place to involve in the early stage of the project (TM stage), middle sage (CQ), and during it (PM stage). The objectives of this research are twofold:
1. Identify the critical factors that eliminate the PSC in the UAE oil and gas industry project’s three stages.
2. Prioritizing and measuring the importance of all procurement and project management critical factors by using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) model to overcome the problem of scope creep in the oil and gas sector.
These objectives will bridge the gap of knowledge in literature about PSC and the key factors that manage such issues. In addition, there is also a lack of a comprehensive AHP framework in the O&G sector in the UAE context to resolve the PSC issue and support leaders and decision-makers to strategize and conceptualize their resources towards the problem solving of such issues a variety of ongoing and upcoming projects.