Abstract: New Public Management (NPM) reforms have also been tried out in many developing countries where the extent of implementation of NPM differs from a nation to nation, public sector reforms along the line of NPM are a common phenomenon in many developing countries including Sri Lanka. However, the degree of success of these reforms appears to be varied between the countries as well as between the projects. Hence, the aim of this study is to investigate the factors influencing the successful project implementation in the public sector in Sri Lanka. For this purpose, the study has chosen to examine the construction projects in the public university system in Sri Lanka. Over years, there have been a number of successful as well as failed construction projects within this sector. The NPM reforms provided the basis for analysis