Evidence versus Pragmatism: Unresolved Conflict between Two Construction Management Paradigms for Contingency Project Environments

This study explores two construction execution and management models for construction and infrastructure development in a new era of fiscal austerity in the face of unplanned, yet devastating natural or man-made disasters. One model explores the role and application of evidence-based construction management, while the other studies the role of the pragmatic approach to construction management in the context of existing cultures and emergent, or dynamic project circumstances. Responses from subject matter experts from two representative dynamic construction and infrastructure development areas (Nigeria and Afghanistan) are evaluated for insights. This research combined expert opinions with time-tested approaches for efficient infrastructure project, procurement, and execution in emergent circumstances of man-made or natural disaster management. While one of the two development strategies is based on performance criteria such as cost, quality and time efficiencies, the other is based on the utilitarian value of a pragmatic juxtaposition of driving social, political and environmental factors. The study is underscored by the notion that while numbers do not lie, they are by their very nature incapable of offering the whole truth.