Abstract: Project planning is part of project management which relates to the use of schedule, it also involves systematic sequencing and scheduling tasks comprising a project, the purpose of the study is to evaluate the influence of local community in Project Planning on the sustainability of projects in Trans Nzoia County. The main problem in the study is that lack of Community participation is a key ingredient in poor delivery of good planning outcomes. Community involvement can assist in the identification of local needs and problems, inform policy-making, and provide feedback on service delivery while at the same time fostering a sense of local ownership towards the projects. However, in practice, effective community involvement in the planning process is often neglected and the benefits remain unrealized, lack of knowledge as to how to engage the community. Either way, the results can be disastrous (that is, lack of community involvement can result in a loss of money and other resources, legal suits, disgruntled citizens giving negative to the media, non-acceptance of the project, and a non-sustainable projects we commonly refer to as white elephants). As long as choice-of-technology decisions are made by an outside agency, community demands cannot be met, even if such demands have been duly assessed (Narayan, 2005) This study particularly focused on finding out the reason why a project like that aimed at providing water, a basic need, may fail to succeed as it were despite being aimed at providing a basic need. the specific objectives of the study are: to establish the influence the involvement of the community in community project design on projects sustainability, to find out the influence of the involvement of the community in standard setting on projects sustainability, To determine the influence of involvement of the community in resource mobilization on projects sustainability ,To establish the influence of involvement of the community in project monitoring on projects sustainability. The study is set to benefit Project managers to be aware of the importance of involving the community in the planning of their projects, frequency with which community based projects fail should be reduced as the project management will learn the importance of involving the community in project planning, The goals of subsequent projects was understood and clearly defined ,it will also benefit other researchers in the same field with new insight to support their arguments and hence improve knowledge base, the study was carried out in Trans Nzoia County a case of county government of Trans Nzoia. A total of 336 respondents was involved in the research out of the respondents each will give their responses composed of project managers, project team, project sponsors and community members, the study was undertaken during the months of August and September 2016 to establish the influence the involvement of the community in community project design on projects sustainability, this study will use a case study research design. A total number of 200 respondents were sampled using stratified sampling and systematic sampling technique. The researcher used questionnaire as the main data collection instruments. The data collected was coded and analyzed using descriptive statistics in order to determine their frequencies and percentages. The R square value shows that 65.35% of Variation in project sustainability was explained by a combined effect of the moderating variable on the other independent variables. From these results, it be seen that the moderating variable has a combined moderating influence on project design, standard settings, resource mobilization and project monitoring and valuation. The findings were that there is a significance improvement on the value of R-squared for the model without the moderating variable which is 60.67% to 65.35% for the model with moderating variable. Hence we reject the null hypothesis of no moderating effect at 5% level of significance
Keywords: Project planning, community participation, project design, community involvement, design, implementation, standard setting, monitoring and evaluation.
Title: Influence of Local Community Involvement in Project Planning on the Sustainability of Projects in Trans Nzoia County
Author: Wanyonyi Wenga Rogers, Dr. Mike Iravo, Mr. Robert Wamalwa Wandera
International Journal of Management and Commerce Innovations
ISSN 2348-7585 (Online)
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