Foreign Funded Construction Projects in Sri Lanka: Review Challenges on Technology Transfer with Local Stakeholders

Abstract

Technology is an integral part of the construction industry and a dominant factor related to cost. Most of the modern materials, plant, equipment and services are innovated by developed countries and their aim is transferring them through funding facilities to other countries. Sri Lankan government intends to obtain foreign funds in order to develop most of the infrastructure and buildings in order to cater for economic growth and living standards which would result in some socio economic issues in the present situation. One of the positive outcomes on foreign funding is the technology transfer. The study aims to define the potential impacts and to assess them to cater for better decisions in future endeavours. The direct population was stakeholders who are in construction projects and selected sampling (experts) was by snowball technique. Quantitative and qualitative methods were applied for data collection in the mode of questionnaire and semi structured interviews. The SPSS computer software was applied in order to check validation of data and to give reliability of findings. The content analysis had been used for synthesis evaluation. The literature review shows positive effects as well as potential negative effects on foreign technology transfer on other countries as well. The outcome of findings reveal that arrival of modern goods, latest methods of execution, sophisticated computer software modelling and simulating, innovative management procedures as consequences of the positive impact. Development in supported industry (example, e-commerce in legal trade) and upgrading is required on education on theory and training, the lack of which derives a negative impact on technology transfer. Finally, the recommendations have been put forward to minimise the areas with potential negative impact and to identify more cost opportunities in positive impact areas in stakeholders’ future projects.