International Journal of Recent advances in Mechanical Engineering (IJMECH) Vol.3, No.2, May 2014 DOI : 10.14810/ijmech.2014.3205 47          Potti Srinivasa Rao 1 Shiva Prasad H C 2 Gopalkrishna B 3 1,2,3 Department of Humanities and Management, Manipal University MIT Manipal, India 1 srinivasapotty@yahoo.co.in 2 hcs.prasad@manipal.edu 3 gopalkrishna.b@manipal.edu ABSTRACT The project management is a subsection of operational management that links to an economic activity. This emphasizes the process of making decisions and operationalising the strategies and tactics to reach the goal through owners, contractors, engineers and consultants within the planned constraints via meeting the schedule. Critical success factors are the bottom line for the successful completion while countering the factors of failure. This research study mainly focuses on relining of blast furnace as a project and so as to identify the critical success factors that influence the project success in a private steel manufacturing company in India. Blast furnaces experience stress in terms of thermal, physical and ware characteristics causing deterioration of the interior blasting architecture. These deformational effects are mitigated through periodic maintenance. The deformation caused by mechanical properties needs to replacement of the lining termed as relining of the shell. Variables for the critical success factors were operationalised through questionnaire survey to identify the critical success factors. Data were collected and evaluated by statistical methods to identify the most critical success factors that influence the project success. The results reveals that project manager related factors are the most important critical success factor for a blast furnace relining project. By taking the critical success factors as important key inputs and fine tuning these factors in such a way project time and cost are saved. KEYWORDS Critical success factors, project manager, communication, criticality index, project experience 1. INTRODUCTION Project planning and scheduling is an important routine activity for many types of companies. A project without the work schedule is less meaningful. At the same time there are variables that intervene the project success. Every project is packed with intrinsic complexity, uncertainty and dynamics. Decisions taken to achieve the targeted milestones are the indicators in anticipation the expected outcomes and thus monitoring the work-in-progress [12]. Research evidences show that certain variables are monitored to crib the success and there not a single definite factor that can cause the project delay. Identification of casual critical factors for project delay is researched frequently and it is essential [8]. Critical factors are those key factors and are the activity in that favours the target the success [9]. Rockart [1982] termed ‘Critical Success Factors (CSF)’ as those factors of key areas of activity that directly gives favourable results for a project goal. Project success requires creating a well-planned project schedule as well as understanding of the key success factors also. It helps the project manager and the stakeholders