**6. Conclusion and recommendation**

Infrastructure development is a critical area for any country's development. Thus, governments allocate significant portions of generated revenue to infrastructure development, of which the South African government is not an exception. Since government sources of income are woefully inadequate, measures must be put in place to use the resources judiciously. However, government resources are often used with less care leading to the wastage of meagre resources, especially in public project execution. The study aimed to identify the risk factors affecting the Northern Cape Province's public infrastructure projects. Through the analysis of the pragmatic information gathered from the participant's responses, issues such as poor contractor performance; poor contract management; political interference; community disruptions; material availability; and lastly, the lack of technical skills, corruption and unforeseen events were identified as prominent project risk

*Risk Factors Affecting Public Infrastructure Projects DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112002*

factors. Further data analysis indicated that participants stated forty-eight (48) risk factors originating from project consultants, contractors, project departments, politics, community, materials, unforeseen circumstances, and corruption. This will give insight to project implementers to be aware of the project risk sources and institute measures to tackle these sources. The study recommends reviewing the plan implementation process to make project risk management practices mandatory before the project is commenced to identify possible risk factors that may disrupt the project objectives. Risk management guidelines must be developed for public infrastructure construction projects in all government departments. The government must ensure corrupt practices are eliminated in the procurement processes by enforcing the procurement regulations strictly to avoid unwarranted interference, which usually leads to the appointment of unqualified project executors, leading to project failures. The limitation of the study is that data were collected from a single province in South Africa; however, the findings may be similar in order of provinces. Future studies should investigate these risk factors' effects on the province's project performance.
