Public building projects in the South-South Region, Nigeria have earned a bad reputation for poor performance. Construction Industry findings point to lack of front-end planning as the main cause of poor project performance. This paper focuses on systematic literature review and semi-structured interviews to identify the factors that affect project definition and front-end factors that influence project performance. The search revealed that the project environment interacts with organizational structures, project resources, Front-end processes and others (frontend management framework, funding, technology, integration, coordination and control) to influence project performance. These findings lead to the development of the conceptual framework, for enhancing project performance in the South-South Region, Nigeria.