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Introduction: Goal-setting in any practice context is vague unless the process is based on a framework that produces good goals. Popular goal-setting frameworks construct Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound (SMART) goal statements. Yet, research of how healthcare goals that are foundational to health plans are formulated is scanty. This case study explored the goal-setting practice of an organisation in Nigeria to discover the theoretical frameworks for setting the goals of their leprosy projects., Methods: The study triangulated individual semi-structured interviews of 10 leprosy managers with a review of their project plans and a participant observation of the organisation's annual planning event. A five-stage thematic analysis was used to serially identify, code, and integrate goal-setting themes from the data collected., Findings: This produced three final emergent themes: stakeholders, strategy, and goal statements, with 11 associated conceptual frameworks. All were further theoretically integrated into one general framework that illustrates the organisational goal-setting practice at the time of study. This revealed a practice with a four-staged linear centre-driven process that led to a top-down, problem-based goal formulation, and produced assigned project plans based on hierarchical non-SMART goal statements., Conclusion: Collaborative goal-setting process is proposed for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timed, and Agreeable statements of project objectives and aims written with Change, Beneficiaries, Indicator, Target, Timeframe and Change, Beneficiaries, Location, and Timeframe models respectively., (© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

This study evaluates the influence of project plans on the outcome of design-build projects. The purpose is to ascertain whether the level of use of project plans can be utilised to improve the outcome of projects procured by the design-build method. To achieve this purpose, a field survey of 42 projects procured by the design-build method and selected by stratified random sampling was conducted. Data were collected with the aid of structured questionnaires and analysed using percentage, mean and the Spearman correlation test. The results of the study indicate that the level of use of project plans has significant influence on some parameters of the design-build projects' outcome. The results also indicate that the inception, design, tendering and construction plans are not prepared in many of the projects sampled. The study concludes that the level of use of project plans can be used to reduce the high time and cost overruns recorded in design-build projects and that there is room for stakeholders to increase the level of use of project plans in design-build projects. The study suggests that stakeholders should ensure that the required project plans are prepared when projects are procured by design-build. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]