The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are broadly divided into two categories: leading indicators and lagging indicators. Leading indicators measure activities that have a significant effect on future performance of a project. The leading indicator thus help in taking proactive measures, while lagging indicators measure the output of past activities, thus enables in taking reactive measures. The emphasis of this research is on leading indicators. The objective of this research is to identify the most relevant leading indicators in the engineering phase from the perspective of engineering consultants and determine how these indicators can be monitored.
Thus the main research question that the thesis aims to answer is: How can leading indicators be used to monitor the performance of an infrastructure project during the engineering phase of infrastructure projects.
The leading indicators that have an impact on the cost and schedule performance in the engineering phase are change requests, decision-making by the client, communication, project size, resource allocation, project team turnover and team efficiency.
The research not only involves the identification of leading indicators but also extends to the development of a framework for monitoring these identified leading indicators.