The Realization of Objectives and Plans of “Maskan-e Mehr” program in Mahdasht Project

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

Abstract

The ‘Transfer of Land Use Rights’ program also called ‘maskan-e-mehr’ with the aim of building one million residential units for low-income Iranian families has been initiated since 2007 by providing facilities such as interest free loans, land price elimination, land preparation and also discounted licensing costs.
‘Maskan-e-mehr’ program due to the involvement of various public and private sectors in many ways represents the situation of Iran’s housing construction projects. Hence the review of projects in this program may recover many hidden aspects that influence the achievement of objectives and planning in the field of housing construction in Iran. Not only the state has not been successful in the establishment of social justice as the main objective of this program but today after four years of ‎ execution of the project, yet the main challenge is managing how to complete unfinished buildings. The aim of this paper is to provide a systematic approach to identify the obstacles in achieving the objectives of ‘maskan-e-mehr’ program. In this regard Mahdasht Project, one of the major housing projects is selected as case study to explore the problems and their associated reasons. Mahdasht project with an area of 150 hectares and 10,476 residential units was commenced in early April 2010 with the cooperation of 25 contractors. According to the plan all units were due to be completed between late June and the end of 2011. But at the end of the due date, only 63% of the plan was delivered and less than 10% of the residential units were completed because of the lack of infrastructure from one side and the lack of ability to exploit the existing infrastructures from the other side. Due to the complexity of the research problem, its diversity, socioeconomic and executional issues as well as the need for in-depth information, the qualitative interview method is applied to this study. Focusing on the objectives and project plan, top level managers of all contractor companies‎, two of the state project managers and three of the senior state executives were interviewed. Ultimately, in order to extract and explore the fundamental social concepts underlying the data, the Grounded theory methodology developed by Glaser was used for the data analysis. To avoid the negative impacts of reviewing the literature by the researchers on the interview process, in the grounded theory method a theoretical sensitivity is developed which is in fact a preliminary study of the literature on cognition of ‘maskan-e-mehr’ program and its objectives. In the next step the methodology, findings, and theoretical framework are discussed. As the first step of the grounded theory in this paper the data from interview is conceptualized to form the appropriate categories. Therefore in the first stage of interviews, senior managers of contractors are involved. In each interview, 26 open questions are asked at the five general subjects. The outcome of this stage is 19 sub-categories in each of the various dimensions of the ‘maskam-e-mehr’ program. Reviewing memos and repeated visits to the scripted Interviews, attempt to create a more comprehensive categories.  The three major categories of "climate of the public sector", "climate of the private sector" and "lack of infrastructure to provide ‘maskam-e-mehr’ objectives" were derived which include all the previous 19 sub-categories. In the next step in order to saturate the categories, other contractors were interviewed and theoretical samplings were conducted to explore the hidden aspects of the major categories. At the end of this stage new sub-categories related to each of the major categories were discovered. All the major categories produced from categorization referred to the central category of "the obstacles of achieving the objectives of ‘maskam-e-mehr’ program". Thus the second stage of the interview for data enrichment is planned and executed using selective coding techniques focused on the central category. In this regard, two of the middle managers and three senior government executives are interviewed. In each interview 13 questions on three subjects were proposed. This stage had a main finding that the Iranian public and private sectors’ climate suffers from a destructive interaction cycle. So this was added as a new major category to the central category. In the next step memos and diagrams were utilized together to show possible relationships and the outcome of this is the following four propositions: The lack of infrastructure in ‘maskam-e-mehr’ program is the main cause of its failure
The climates of the public and private sectors mutually reinforce each other
The climates of the public and private sectors, made the climate of ‘maskam-e-mehr’ program.
The climate of the ‘maskam-e-mehr’ program has intensified the impact of the
‘lack of infrastructure’ in the failure of the program to achieve its objectives.
As the last step of the research, an extensive literature review is conducted to complete the proposed theoretical framework. The outcome of this stage is a new major category of "failure to observe the necessary measures of the design-build project delivery system". In conclusion, based on an analysis of data from the interviews and the literature study, it is implied that despite of the efforts was made in the development of objectives, laws, regulations and administrative sheets, the program has failed to achieve its objectives and plans. The main reason for this issue might be the lack of infrastructure of delivering such program in Iran and failure to observe the necessary measures of the design-build project delivery system. Factors such as the strengthening cycle of public and private sector climates amplified this condition. It seems that development of plans regardless of implementing needed infrastructures is not sufficient and the success of such programs in addition to providing the necessary infrastructure requires major reforms to the destructive interaction between the public and private sector climates.

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