Strengthening success factors and overcoming profitability barriers towards sustainable project management consultant companies

Project success can be assured by identifying, reducing, and eliminating the impact of profitability barriers; and by understanding and exploring the success factors in order to achieve sustainable profitability of Project Management Consultant (PMC) companies. Currently, practices of project management consultants in the construction industry sector do not always ensure project success. Thus, this paper aims to assess and strengthen the success factors; and overcome profitability barriers to improve effectiveness of project delivery. Using Porter’s five forces model as profitability barriers, areas with the highest impact to sustainable profitability were investigated. Data were gathered through a survey questionnaire and purposive sampling technique was used to select 140 respondents who are working in a project management and consulting company in Doha, Qatar for the year 2016-2017. The findings revealed that profitability barriers such as: power of suppliers, industry competition, and impact of new entrants are correlated to some of the areas of success factors, such as: effective project management, efficient cost leadership, competitive differentiation, and strategic alliances and networking. Sustainable profitability is significantly affected by the power of suppliers, and strategic networking and alliance. Whereas, competitive differentiation significantly affects profitability barriers. Based on the findings of this study, recommendations were given on how to strengthen project success factors and reduce the impact of profitability barriers.