Cause of Construction Delay - Theoretical Framework

Delay Causes and Types in Nigerian Power Construction Projects

Numerous events cause delays to entire power projects’ completion timelines, leading to loss. This paper focuses on revealing the critical delay causes in Nigerian power projects and identifying the delay types such as excusable delay, compensable delay, critical delay, and concurrent delay from the different perspectives of owner and contractor. Based on the survey of the 84 industrial experts in power distribution and transmission projects in Nigeria, this study provides the mean score and rank of 39 delay causes. Among the causes, 14 are identified as critical in the Nigerian power project. The top three critical delay causes are corruption and bureaucracy in government, inadequate fund/budget allocation, and price fluctuation/inflation. Owner and contractor do not show the difference in classifying the 14 delay causes into excusable and compensable delays. However, there was a difference between owner and contractor in categorizing whether a cause is critical or not and concurrent or not. A different viewpoint of types of delay cause can lead to a dispute which may lead to other delays and losses, and thus it is meaningful to understand the types of delay perceived from owner and contractor. Even though the delay cause and types are different depending on an individual project, the results of this study serve as a reference and would be beneficial for the practitioners in the construction industry to help identify the delay causes to manage them effectively.

Forecasting the Project Duration Average and Standard Deviation from Deterministic Schedule Information

Most construction managers use deterministic scheduling techniques to plan construction projects and estimate their duration. However, deterministic techniques are known to underestimate the project duration. Alternative methods, such as Stochastic Network Analysis, have rarely been adopted in practical contexts as they are commonly computer-intensive, require extensive historical information, have limited contextual/local validity and/or require skills most practitioners have not been trained for. In this paper, we propose some mathematical expressions to approximate the average and the standard deviation of a project duration from basic deterministic schedule information. The expressions’ performance is successfully tested in a 4100-network dataset with varied activity durations and activity durations variability. Calculations are quite straightforward and can be implemented manually. Furthermore, unlike the Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT), they allow drawing inferences about the probability of project duration in the presence of several critical and subcritical paths with minimal additional calculation.

Causes of Delay in Power Transmission Projects: An Empirical Study

Power transmission (PT) projects are vital for the power sector. However, worldwide PT projects experience delay. There is an urgent need to understand the unique causes of delays in PT projects. This paper presents the first empirical study on causes of delays in PT projects via a comprehensive literature review. Based on this literature review, 63 potential delay factors are identified and divided into ten major groups. These include two new groups of delay attributes, comprising sector-specific factors (SSF) and general factors (GF), where SSF pertains solely to PT projects and GF contributes to minimizing the bias of project participants. A questionnaire survey of 311 PT stakeholders is conducted to determine the overall ranking of the delay factors using the relative importance index. The results indicate that SSF, GF, and external/unavoidable factors are the most critical groups of delay factors, with the top-ranked factors being right of way problems of transmission line (TL), frequent changes in TL routes, and accessibility to the TL tower locations. Finally, recommendations are made to help minimize time overruns in PT projects, as well as in other linear power and non-power construction projects in general.

Validation of an integrated influential factors (IIFs) model as a panacea to curb projects completion delay in Yemen

Purpose

Influential factors attributed to causing project completion delay (PCD) differ because of prevailing variability of local conditions. Construction projects specifically in Yemen (and other developing countries) experience devastating effects of PCD which include litigation, cost overrun, arbitration, abandonment and failure. While existing works have investigated the causes and effects of PCD, not much exist on approaches to optimizing its occurrence in Yemen. In a bid to enhance the effects of PCD in Yemen, the integrated influential factors (IIFs), which is a construction-party specific model, was developed to mitigate the effects of PCD in Yemen. As a build up to the development of this model, this paper aims to validate the IIFs model with a view to foster its application to enhance PCD in construction project delivery in Yemen.

Design/methodology/approach

The validation of the IIFs model was done through seeking the opinions of 12 selected construction industry experts. This involved using a structured questionnaire to seek information on the sustainability of implementing the IIFs model.

Findings

The findings revealed that if the IIFs model is vigorously implemented, it would go a long way in curbing delay in the delivery of construction projects, making construction delivery less risky due to the effects of delay.

Research limitations/implications

The study is limited to only influential factors of internal stakeholders of the construction phase. Similarly, the study was only conducted in the state of Sana'a, Yemen. The implication of the adoption of the IIFs model is that it can hopefully serve as an adaptive controller to construction project delivery relative to the specific parameters and factors investigated in this study.

Originality/value

The IIFs model is a novel approach to optimizing PCD in Yemen specific to both the construction-phase and internal stakeholders. Existing studies on PCD in Yemen, although investigating the causes and effect of PCD, hardly proffer any approach to optimizing PCD for successful construction project delivery.

Analyzing delay causes in Egyptian construction projects

Construction delays are common problems in civil engineering projects in Egypt. These problems occur frequently during project life-time leading to disputes and litigation. Therefore, it is essential to study and analyze causes of construction delays. This research presents a list of construction delay causes retrieved from literature. The feedback of construction experts was obtained through interviews. Subsequently, a questionnaire survey was prepared. The questionnaire survey was distributed to thirty-three construction experts who represent owners, consultants, and contractor’s organizations. Frequency Index, Severity Index, and Importance Index are calculated and according to the highest values of them the top ten delay causes of construction projects in Egypt are determined. A case study is analyzed and compared to the most important delay causes in the research. Statistical analysis is carried out using analysis of variance ANOVA method to test delay causes, obtained from the survey. The test results reveal good correlation between groups while there is significant difference between them for some delay causes and finally roadmap for prioritizing delay causes groups is presented.