A Conceptual management framework for resource and financial optimisation of construction SMEs in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Construction small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Sri Lanka play a significant role in project delivery. However, many continue to manage procurement, site records, inventory movements, supplier payments, and financial information through fragmented and partially manual systems. This fragmentation contributes to delayed reconciliation, duplicated data entry, weak audit trails, limited visibility of committed costs, and inadequate monitoring of project cash-flow exposure. This study developed a conceptual management framework for strategic resource and financial optimisation in Sri Lankan construction SMEs. A sequential explanatory mixed-method research design was adopted. The quantitative phase comprised a questionnaire survey of 30 construction practitioners, and the responses were analysed using Relative Importance Index (RII). The qualitative phase comprised eight semi-structured interviews with SME-related stakeholders, and the data were analysed thematically to refine and validate the proposed framework. The findings revealed that budget overruns, wastage, stock mismatches, cash-flow uncertainty, and poor cost visibility were the most critical management challenges. The highest-ranked framework requirements were exception-based alerts, real-time cash-flow visibility, supplier payment tracking, delivery-status monitoring, and budget-versus-actual dashboards. The proposed framework consists of four interrelated layers, namely mobile site-data capture, validation and three-way matching, accounting-system interface, and analytical dashboards. The study contributes to construction SME management by proposing an affordable, modular, and practically implementable conceptual management framework that links site-level resource evidence with financial control. Future research should develop and test a functional prototype to evaluate its impact on reconciliation time, payment delays, stock accuracy, and cost visibility.