Influence of Technological Environment on Performance of Gated Community Housing Projects in Nairobi County, Kenya

The principal objective of the study reported in this article was toempirically assess the influence of technological environment onperformance of gated community housing projects in Nairobi County,Kenya. The study population comprised of all active gated communityhousing projects initiated in 2009 – 2014. A total of 572 respondents weredrawn from 143 sampled gated community housing projects from theseventeen sub-counties of Nairobi County (four members were drawn fromeach sampled gated community project – client, consultant, contractor, andthe gated community facility manager) using census, stratified, simplerandom, and purposive sampling techniques. A standardized open endedinterview guide and a questionnaire with both open and closed-ended itemswith Likert-type interval scale anchored on a five point scale were used tocollect data. Descriptive statistics show that respondents agreed that to a verygreat extent their projects used locally made plant and equipment (M=4.80,SD=0.40), to a great extent skills were available for operation of the plantand equipment (M=4.04, SD=0.47), to a great extent team members withnecessary skills to operate and use the plant equipment were available(M=4.0, SD=0.43), to a very great extent use of information andcommunication technology (ICT) was satisfactory (M=4.49, SD=0.71), to avery great extent computer aided drafting (CAD) was used (M=4.62,SD=0.71), to a very great extend 3D visual illustrations - BuildingInformation Modelling, was used (M=4.65, SD=0.48), and to a very great extent electronic mails and communication was used (M=4.86, SD=0.34.Results from inferential statistics show that r is equal to 0.559, indicating thattechnological environment has a moderately strong influence on performancein gated community housing projects. The value of r squared is 0.312,indicating that technological environment explains 31.2% of the variation inthe performance in gated community housing projects in Nairobi County,Kenya. The β coefficient is 0.327, indicating that technology environmenthad statistically significant influence on the performance of gatedcommunity housing projects (β=0.327, t= 4.758, p=0.000<0.05). Consideringthe p value, it can be noted that the p value for technological environment(p=0.000) is statistically significant. The β value imply that one unit changein performance in gated community housing project is associated with 32.7%changes in technological environment.