Journal of IT and Economic Development 7(1), 15-24, April 2016 15
Delay Analysis of Construction Projects
B. Prakash Rao
Department of Civil Engineering ,MIT Manipal-576104, Manipal University, Karnataka, India
[email protected]; [email protected]
Spurthy C Shekar, Nikita Jaiswal, Aman Jain, Anubhav Deep Saxena
MIT Manipal, Manipal University, Karnataka, India
Abstract
Construction delays can be defined as the late completion of works compared to the planned
schedule or contract schedule. Construction delays can be minimized only when their causes are
identified. The objective of this study is to identify the major causes of construction delays in
India; in particular the Manipal Town. This study is carried out based on literature review and a
questionnaire survey. The questionnaire was designed based on the forty two factors of delays
under six distinct categories targeting the contractors, clients and consultants. The Likert’s scale
of five ordinal measures is used in this survey. The level of importance of each factor of delays is
established by computing Relative Importance Indices (RII).The analysis is made using
Microsoft Excel. The major cause of delay out of 42 causes is identified in the category of
Owner Related Factors which is due to delay in payments having RII-0.812
Key Words: Construction delays, Questionnaire, Likert scale, Factor of delays, Relative
importance indices
Introduction
Delay is generally acknowledged as the most common, costly, complex and risky problem
encountered in construction projects. Because of the overriding importance of time for both the
Journal of IT and Economic Development 7(1), 15-24, April 2016 16
owner (in terms of performance) and the contractor (in terms of money), it is the source of frequent
disputes and claims leading to lawsuits.
Delays caused by the client such as late submission of drawings and specifications, frequent
change orders and incorrect site information generates claims from both the main contractors and
subcontractors which many times entail lengthy code battles with huge financial repercussions.
Delays caused by contractors can generally be attributed to poor managerial skills. Lack of
planning and a poor understanding of accounting and financial principles have led to many a
contactors downfall.
Delays can be minimised when their causes are identified. Identification of the factors that
contributed to the causes of delays has been studied by numerous researchers in several countries.
Delay is a situation when the contractor, consultant and client jointly or severally contributed to
the non-completion of the project within the original or the stipulated or agree contract period.
Construction delays are for the most part costly and completing projects on time is beneficial to
all the parties. Therefore, it is essential to identify the actual causes of delay in order to minimize
and avoid the delays and their corresponding expenses.
Types of delay
Before analysing construction delays, a clear understanding of the general types of delays is
necessary. There are four basic ways to categorize delays:

Critical or Non-Critical, Excusable or Non-Excusable, Concurrent or Non-Concurrent
and Compensable or Non-Compensable
Journal of IT and Economic Development 7(1), 15-24, April 2016 17
Role of construction actors in the industry
There are diverse interests in the construction industry. The principal interests or actors in the
construction industry are:

Client, Consultant and Contractor
Literature survey
1. Chan and Kumaraswamy (1997) conducted a research on potential delay factors in Hong
Kong construction projects as seen by clients, consultants. Five principal factors are
identified: Poor risk management and supervision, unforeseen site conditions, slow
decision making, client initiated variations and work variations.
2. Mezher and Tawil (1998) conducted a survey of the causes of delay in construction
industry in Lebanon from the view point of owners, contractors and architectural or
engineering firms. It was found that the owners had more concerns with regard to financial
issues; contractors regarded contractual relationship the most important, while consultants
considered project management issues to be the most important causes of delays.
3. Sweis G., Sweis R., Abu Hamad., and Shboul (2008) studied the causes of delay in
residential projects in Jordan and concluded that financial difficulties faced by the
contactor and too many change orders by the owner are the leading cause of construction
delay.
4. A paper on Calculation of Contingency in Construction Projects by Ali Touran (2003)
presents a probabilistic model that considers the random nature of change orders and their
Journal of IT and Economic Development 7(1), 15-24, April 2016 18
impact on the cost and schedule of a construction project. The model incorporates
uncertainties in project cost and schedule and calculates the contingency based on the level
of confidence specified by the owner. It assumes a Poisson arrival pattern for change orders
in a construction project. The effect of schedule delays in further increasing the project cost
is considered explicitly and the effect of correlation between change orders is discussed
and analytically considered. The proposed model may be used for budgeting purposes at
the early stages of project development.
5. Fugar and Agyakwah-Baah (2010) investigated the causes of delay of building construction
projects in Ghana to determine the most important according to the key project participants.
All major stake holders agreed that the top ten most important factors causing delay in
Ghana are: delay in honouring payment certificates, underestimation of the cost of projects,
underestimation of complexity of project, difficulty in accessing bank credit, poor
supervision, underestimation of time for completion of projects by contractors, shortage of
materials, poor professional management, fluctuation of rises or rising cost of materials,
and poor site management.
6. Assaf, Al-Khalil and A-Hazmi (2011) summarized main causes of delay in large building
construction projects in Saudi Arabia. The identified approval of shop drawings, delays in
payment to contractors and the resulting cash problems during construction, design
changes, conflicts in work schedules of sub-contractors, slow decision making and
executive bureaucracy in owner’s organizations, design errors, labour shortage and
inadequate labour skills as the most important causes of delays.
Journal of IT and Economic Development 7(1), 15-24, April 2016 19
Methodology
The preliminary data for this research was collected through a literature review and the
questionnaire survey targeted at some contractors, clients and consultants in some projects in
Manipal. Relative Importance Index (RII) for each of the identified factors causing delay was
calculated.
Identification of delay factors
In this step, some of the causes for delay that may be encountered in a construction project were
identified.
The causes of delay are then classified into six broad categories depending on their nature and
mode of occurrence:

Consultant related factors, Contractor related factors, Owner related factors, Design
related factors, External related factors and Project related factors
Journal of IT and Economic Development 7(1), 15-24, April 2016 20
The factors causing delays are summarized in Table 1
Table 1: Overall group and factors causing delay.
Group
Consultant related
Contractor related
Owner related
Design related
External related
Project related
Factors causing delay



























Lack of experience of consultant in construction projects.
Delay in approving major changes.
Delay in performing inspection and testing.
Inadequate project management assistance.
Late in reviewing and approving design documents.
Poor communication and coordination with other parties.
Delays by subcontractor.
Inadequate contractor experience.
Contractors planning and scheduling problems.
Inadequate site supervision.
Shortage of labour.
Slow site clearance.
Poor management and execution.
Equipment breakdown
Unavailability of equipment
Inadequate skill of operators.
Delay in payments.
Slow decision making.
Delay in approving documents.
Delay in producing documents.
Variations during construction.
Suspension of work.
Design changes during construction.
Late issuance of instruction.
Misunderstanding of owner’s requirement by design engineers.
Poor use of design software.
Inadequate details.















Accidents.
Changes in rules and regulations.
Trade unions.
Price fluctuations.
Unfavourable weather conditions.
Delay in obtaining permission.
Non availability of utility in site.
Problems with neighbours.
Unforeseen ground conditions.
Shortage of materials.
Project complexity
Disputes.
Original contract duration is short.
Lack of communication between parties.
Speed of decision making involving all parties.
Journal of IT and Economic Development 7(1), 15-24, April 2016 21
Questionnaire design
The questionnaire was designed based on forty two factors under six categories which were
identified to contribute to the cause of delays. A questionnaire survey was conducted to assess the
perception of contractors, clients and consultants. The questionnaire is mainly based on Linkert’s
scale of five ordinal measures from 1 to 5 according to the level of contribution
Data collection and Analysis
Questionnaires were distributed to the following a number of constructions parties of the
projects in Manipal area. Data obtained through these questionnaires are analysed by computing
Relative Importance Indices (RII)
Relative Importance Index
The five point Likert scale ranging from 1(very low importance) to 5(very high importance) was
adopted to quantify results of survey. The level of importance of each factor is established by
comparing Relative Importance Index for each of the factor as follows:
RII = ∑W/ (A*N)
Where,
W – Weighting given to each factor by the respondents (ranging from 1 to 5).
A – The highest weight (i.e. 5 in this case).
N – The total number of respondents.
The RII ranges from 0 to 1, higher the value of RII more important was the cause of delays.
These ranking make it possible to compare the relative importance of the factors.
Result analysis
All the questionnaire survey was done from project managers of the project or project engineer at
the site. In some cases consultant gave the answers on behalf of their clients, both from the owner
and the contractor side. Even telephonic and email reply was accepted since it was difficult to get
Journal of IT and Economic Development 7(1), 15-24, April 2016 22
the direct one to one meeting with the project managers. The analysed data is summarized in Table
2
Table 2: Data analysis
Group of
factors
Consultant
related
factors
Sl.
No
1=
very
low
2=
low
3=
medium
4=
high
5=
very
high
3
Mean
value
Rank
0.636
16
0.563
23
Lack of experience of
consultant
1
7
13
9
2
Delay in approving
major changes.
Delay in performing
inspection and testing.
Inadequate project
management
Delay in approving
design documents.
Poor communication
and coordination with
other parties.
Delays by
subcontractor.
Inadequate contractor
experience.
Contractors planning
and scheduling
problems.
Inadequate site
supervision.
Shortage of labour.
Slow site clearance.
Poor management and
execution.
Equipment breakdown
Unavailability of
equipment
Inadequate skill of
operators.
Delay in payments.
Slow decision making.
Delay in approving
documents.
2
7
19
5
1
5
15
10
2
0.642
15
2
9
14
7
1
0.576
22
1
2
14
12
4
0.697
9
7
12
10
4
0667
13
11
7
5
10
0.685
10
1
2
15
7
8
0.667
13
1
2
15
13
2
0.679
11
14
6
1
12
0.667
13
1
1
4
3
6
12
14
6
12
14
9
5
1
11
0.678
0.667
0.739
12
13
4
3
4
10
7
12
14
6
7
2
1
0.563
0.563
23
23
4
5
13
5
6
0.624
17
1
1
1
2
5
12
13
15
4
13
9
16
4
3
0.812
0.703
0.648
1
8
14
4
5
6
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Owner
related
factors
Importance
1
3
Contractor
related
factors
Factors causing delays
1
2
3
Journal of IT and Economic Development 7(1), 15-24, April 2016 23
4
5
Design
related
factors
6
1
2
3
4
External
related
factors
5
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Project
related
factors
10
1
2
3
4
5
Delay in producing
documents.
Variations during
construction.
Suspension of work.
Design changes during
construction.
Late issuance of
instruction.
Misunderstanding of
owner’s requirement
by design engineers.
Poor use of design
software.
Inadequate details.
Accidents.
Changes in rules and
regulations.
Trade unions.
Price fluctuations.
Unfavourable weather
conditions.
Delay in obtaining
permission.
Non availability of
utility in site.
Problems with
neighbours.
Unforeseen ground
conditions.
Shortage of materials.
Project complexity.
Disputes.
Original contract
duration is short.
Lack of
communication
between parties.
Speed of decision
making involving all
parties.
3
5
12
13
0.612
18
1
3
7
17
5
0.733
5
2
2
5
5
7
9
12
7
7
10
0.703
0.709
8
7
5
10
7
11
0.745
3
2
11
14
4
2
0.581
21
7
13
6
3
4
0.503
27
4
9
2
11
2
7
8
11
20
8
11
4
2
0.557
0.545
0.557
27
25
24
3
7
4
14
2
5
3
3
5
13
11
8
10
0.509
0.678
0.642
26
12
15
3
7
13
8
2
0.594
19
7
9
11
5
1
0.503
27
4
17
7
5
0.478
29
10
7
7
7
2
0.503
27
2
3
8
1
3
3
14
8
14
18
18
8
7
4
3
6
2
4
3
0.679
0.612
0.49
0.593
11
18
28
20
10
17
6
0.775
2
10
8
9
0.721
6
6
11
3
Conclusion
1. The major causes for delay by owners is delay in making the payments having RII 0.812
and ranking 1st among 42 factors.
Journal of IT and Economic Development 7(1), 15-24, April 2016 24
2. The major causes for delay by project related factors is lack of communication between
parties having RII 0.775 and ranking 2nd among 42 causes.
3. The major causes for delay by design related factors is late issue of instruction having RII
0.745, ranked 3 among 42 factors.
4. The major causes for delay by contractors is poor management and execution having RII
0.739 and ranking 4th among 42 factors.
5. The major cause for delay by the consultant related factors is delay in approving design
document having RII 0.697 and ranking 9th among 42 causes.
6. The major causes for delay by external factors is delay due to Shortage of materials and
price fluctuations ranking 11th and 12th respectively.
References
Chan, D. W., & Kumaraswamy, M. M. (1997). A comparative study of causes of time overruns
in Hong Kong construction projects. International Journal of project management, 15(1),
55-63.
Mezher, T. M., & Tawil, W. (1998). Causes of delays in the construction industry in
Lebanon. Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, 5(3), 252-260.
Sweis, G., Sweis, R., Hammad, A. A., & Shboul, A. (2008). Delays in construction projects: The
case of Jordan. International Journal of Project Management, 26(6), 665-674.
Touran, A. (2003). Calculation of contingency in construction projects.Engineering
Management, IEEE Transactions on, 50(2), 135-140.
Fugar, F. D., & Agyakwah-Baah, A. B. (2010). Delays in building construction projects in
Ghana. Australasian Journal of Construction Economics and Building, The, 10(1/2), 128.
Assaf, S. A., Al-Khalil, M., & Al-Hazmi, M. (1995). Causes of delay in large building
construction projects. Journal of management in engineering, 11(2), 45-50.