Research on factors affecting and strategies for objective control in large-scale international EPC projects

Currently, large-scale international EPC engineering projects often suffer from significant cost overruns and major schedule delays due to a lack of comprehensive and systematic identification and quantitative analysis of factors affecting Objective Control from a holistic perspective. This often leads to conflicting management objectives and difficulties in effectively allocating limited resources, resulting in many projects being out of control. This study aims to systematically identify, construct, and quantify key factors that affect Objective Control in large-scale international EPC projects, providing a strategic framework to improve the effectiveness of multi-objective control and contribute to the overall success and sustainable development of international contractors. Initially, this study employs grounded theory to systematically encode secondary data such as relevant literature and case reports, initially constructing a systematic theoretical model of "EPC Integrated management capability". Subsequently, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is used to analyze data collected from EPC professionals, verifying and improving the structure, reliability, and validity of the model, ensuring robust measurement, and determining the relative weight of identified factors.This study establishes and validates a hierarchical model of 'EPC Integrated Management Capability', identifying design leadership (27.13%) and international supply chain management (25.68%) as the two most critical pillars, significantly surpassing construction performance ability (21.09%). Notably, the rationality of procurement planning emerges as the most influential single factor. These findings empirically validate the 'front-end loading' principle and indicate a paradigm shift from construction-centric control to a strategic focus on integrated design and supply chain management. The primary theoretical contribution of this study is the development of a new, empirically validated measurement scale for EPC Integrated Management Capability, advancing EPC governance theory by quantifying the core integrated structure. In practice, this study provides actionable insights for international EPC turnkey contractors: it emphasizes the necessity of elevating procurement planning to a strategic level, investing in innovative design teams, formalizing design-construction supply chain integration, and cultivating resilient global supplier networks to effectively navigate the complexities of the international market.