Systematic Literature Review on Success Criteria for Dam Engineering Projects

Despite the huge amount of research and diversity of project management topics, there is no well-established research on success of projects. Thus it is necessary to create models of project success and rate project performance for specific fields. Dam engineering projects have significant economic, social, and environmental impact. However, their performance over the life cycle, including strategic planning, design, construction, and operation, has not been systematically studied. Improving the performance of dam engineering projects is an area unknown to researchers and project managers. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to fill in this knowledge gap with an extensive literature review, looking at primary studies for extraction of project success criteria. Systematic review of the literature reveals that 13 items are candidates for success criteria of dam engineering projects in Australia. In this systematic literature review process, data extraction and analysis and reporting, have been tailored to answer the research question. Analysis of the selected articles using two dimensions of publication and content characteristics offers a more comprehensive perspective of the publication set in this area of research. A growing trend in the publications indicates a still emerging and growing research area, as more researchers and project practitioners are interested in the area of project success. Analysis of the content characteristics shows that despite the still-dominant Iron Triangle (time, budget, and quality) cited most often as project success criteria, new criteria are emerging, because the researchers see project success as achieving long-term objectives of the projects as well. This state-of-the-art review paper presents a comprehensive list of potential success criteria related to success of the dam engineering industry. (c) 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.