THE PROJECT AUDIT: INTEGRATING PROJECT MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES INTO AUDITING

Abstract

Project Audit is said to be an important step at the end of a project life cycle or even at the end of every stage during the project life cycle; but what does a project audit involve and in what aspects it differs, if it actually does, from traditional audit? It is the objective of this paper to expose and define what Project Audit is, and what has been produced about the topic. This objective is obtained by answering the proposed research question on whether Project Audit is a new type of auditing which uses project management principles, or it is simply a traditional and integrative audit process applied to projects. An extensive literature review has been performed which revealed the opposite perspectives of different authors on the subject since 1960, where auditing and project management fields started to evolve. The research suggests that project audit is not fully recognized as a new type of audit but rather as a traditional one applied to projects. Further research is recommended to be done on the development of project audit in Ecuador and Latin America, where project management is not as established as in other regions of the world.