Construction Projects Delay Causes- Economical and Industrial Effect

Construction Projects Delay Causes- Economical and Industrial Effect

Published by : http://www.ijert.org

International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)

ISSN: 2278-0181

Vol. 6 Issue 03, March-2017

Ehab Soliman*

Civil Engineering Dept.,

Kuwait University, P.O. Box 5969 Kuwait

Abstarct – Construction projects always exposed to delay. This problem is global problem. Many studies have conducted to analyse delay in construction projects. Most of the research work conducted in delaying construction projects aimed to measure and rank the direct delays that project faced during its life. These studies conducted in different countries with different technical, economical and contractual conditions. In this study, an extensive review of previous research work in delay causes definition and ranking conducted. The objective of this study is to analyse the effect of changing economical and construction environmental conditions on occurrence of delay causes and their importance. This study analysed results of some of previous researches conducted all over the world. This analysis revealed that the economical, contractual and technical factors have highly effect on the delay causes ranking in developing countries, while the project characteristics have the high influence in developed countries. Three delay causes are common in all studies in all economical situations that have highly effect on delay occurrence. These delay causes are shortage of materials, shortage of labours, and problems gained from suppliers and subcontractors. Any effort to mitigate delay occurrence in construction projects should consider this result into consideration.

Keywords: Construction projects, Construction delays, causes of delays, effect of economic conditions, comparative analysis

INTRODUCTION

Poor time completion performance well known as an international problem. In a study for World Bank conducted in 1990, figures showed that for the 1627 projects completed between 1974 and 1988 the overrun varied from 50% to 80% of the original duration. In Canada, Semple et al 1994 showed that over 70% of high-rise building in Western Canada experienced time over- run. In Australia, the results of a survey of 400 completed building projects showed that only one contract in eight completed on or before the date originally expected and the overall average extra time taken exceeded 40% of the original, Kaka and Price

,1991. In the developing countries, the problem may be worse; in Turkey, Arditi et al 1985 survey of 258 public projects in Turkey showed that 44% overran from the original duration and in Saudi Arabia it is found that the percentage of delayed projects in Saudi Arabia varied from 35% to 84%, Al-Gafly 1995. Even green buildings also exposed to delays, 32.29% of the green construction projects completed behind schedule – Hwang and Leong 2013.

As described above, the problem of delays in construction projects is significant and a global problem. In this research, a comparative analysis for previous research works to evaluate economical and construction industry characteristics on imported delay causes occurrence.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE

Construction industry should evaluate causes of delay and tray to prevent their occurrence and to mitigate their effects in case of occurrence. This research aims to evaluate the differences of economical, technical and contractual conditions on occurrence of important construction project delay causes.

Research Methodology:

To achieve this objective, the work will pass through these steps: Gathering results of research work conducted in delay causes Analysing the research work results

Put comparison criteria for conducted research work

Analysis for the comparison of conducted research work results

Many of previous studies regarding delay causes measuring and ranking conducted in globally. More than 20 published research work were extensively analysed to check the effect of difference of construction industry and economical situation effect on rank of delay causes.

Most of these studies discussed in Soliman 2006. Table 1 describes summary of the previous researches. The table contains comparison of the used sampling techniques, the participants, and the research methodology.

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Table 1: Previous research work in delay causes and ranking

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Table 1: Previous research work in delay causes and ranking – continue

Table 1: Previous research work in delay causes and ranking continue

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PREVIOUS RESEARCH WORK ANALYSIS

In this section, analyse for previous research work from these points:

Method of data gathering

Table 1 shows that all data gathered mainly gathered through questionnaire. These questionnaires distributed for participants who are working in construction industry. The questionnaire may be mailed or interview questionnaire.

Delay causes and groups

Some of researches used number of delay causes in one group, others categorised the delay causes into number of groups varied from four as in Zayed and Kalavagunta, 2005 and 9 groups as in Assaf et al 1995. The number of used surveyed delay causes varied from 30 delay causes as in Soliman 2010 and 83 delay causes as in Kumaraswamy, and Daniel 1998.

It is important to notice that the surveyed delay causes may be different in wording but similar in meanings. Some of researches used different meanings for the delay causes, some used the word "delay causes", and others used "delay factors" and "delay contributors". Although there is different in wording in these terms, the meaning is almost the same and the usage of researchers for the wording is almost the same.

Participant's categories:

In previous studies, many participants are groups based on their employers. In all construction industry the main groups that are ruling the project are:

Project owners. This group contains who own the project and/or who are responsible for finance and leading project during construction time. Delaying project submittal to owner will prevent owner of project usage and lose lot of money. This group of participants contains project owners, clients and developers.

Designer / consultant/ A/E. This group contains the technical personnel who are responsible for project technical design and producing technical and contract drawings before or during construction period. In traditional contracting, the designer is responsible for completing all the design work before bidding and awarding stage. Project delaying will prevent realising project technical staff, keep them until project finish, and hence increase consultant costs. This group contains consultants, architects, engineers, quantity surveyors and A/E.

Contractors, constructors. This group is responsible for all the execution works and translating drawings and technical instruction given by consultants until complete and submit project to employer. Many drawbacks recorded from project delay in contractor point of view such as financial arrangement, bad reputation, and ability of contractor to project financial and releasing contractors resource to use in different project. This group contains contractors and employees for contractors.

Surveyed Project types

Many of researches defined the project types either public or private finance. The project type surveyed contains all project types such as civil projects, building projects, road projects, water and sewage projects, high-rise buildings, underground projects and industry projects

Most of delay causes are common and difference of project types has no great effect of delay causes difference.

Methods of sampling analysis and results

All conducted researches in this area asked construction personnel to evaluate the importance level of delay cause based on his experience. The level of importance presented to participants in different levels such as very important, important, average, has moderate importance, and has no importance. Many techniques used to rank delay causes. Baldwin, 1971 proposed severity index to evaluate and rank delay causes. The severity index is an index that adds what is above average ranking only. The techniques used in previous studies as shown in Table 1 are:

Severity index

Average or mean values Importance index

AHP

Because of the difference of participants point of view and different of their objectives, mos of past research work used a parameter to evaluate level of agreement between participant evaluation for delay causes. Table 1 shows the used parameters to evaluate level of agreement. These parameters were:

Rank agreement factor Spearman correlation coefficient

DISCUSSION

The used delay causes, groups of causes and ranking methods were different from a research to another. There are three problems to get a common analysis for previous research results, which are:

Most of researches results were from different participants' categories and theses categorises are different in opinions and objectives. In all conducted research works, the participants were belonging to different groups based on their employer. It is obvious that the three groups have different objectives, and when they asked to determine the causes of delays, they often blamed the other groups. This statement proven from all previous studies. The groups' difference in perceptions may be influenced by:

The wording of the delay causes in questionnaire and this might affect the increase in buck passing by different groups.

It suggested that the apparent collective biases displayed by the different groups as they often directed the blame for delays to other groups. This could discourage a search for the root causes of delays and their solution.

The used delay causes in previous research work have different phrasing in spite of they are close or in similar meanings.

The previous studies have done in different places with different number of delay causes. For example, a delay cause may be ranked 9th in a study of 35 delay causes, while it is ranked 3rd in a study of 16 delay causes, so it is not easy to compare the delay cause ranking in different groups and numbers.

To deal with the first problem, an absolute ranking considered for previous studies in spite of changing in participants' groups ranking. For example in Soliman study – 2010, contractor financial problems ranked second from consultants judgement, contractors ranked this delay cause as sixth. An absolute value calculated by adding the two values of ranks to represent an absolute value for both groups. A revised rank will be resulted by using the resulted absolute values as shown in table 2.

To deal with the second problem, the similar wording or nearly meaning words put as one delay cause. Sometimes the delay cause put in a research as "equipment breakdown" others used breakdown equipment others uses" delay resulted from equipment breakdown". These delay causes are dealt as one cause equipment breakdown" and for the same situation.

To deal with the third problem, the study result ranking for the delay causes can assumed as five rank categories: Top ranked delay cause, (T)

High ranked delay cause (H) Average ranked delay cause (A) Low ranked and (L)

Not important or not effective delay cause (N)

The resulted delay cause ranked divided into these five ranks. If the delay cause was in the top 20% of the delay cause ranking, it assumed as top ranked. If the delay cause rank was on the least 20 % of the delay cause ranked, it assumed as no importance delay cause. Based on the above assumptions, table (2) can be resulted for Soliman [10]. The same procedure applied for other mentioned studies.

Table 2: absolute ranking and rank categorises for Soliman 2010 Study

To deal with the different places of research work, it is noticed that the causes of delays vary from one country to another and delay causes ranking is very sensitive to each countrys economic and industrial condition. Globally countries can divide into three groups: developed, developing and fast economic growth countries. The previous research work divided into three main groups. This dividing is based on economic stability, economic capability, GDP, GNP, per capital income and availability of construction industry infrastructure. Construction industry infrastructure such as institutions to facilitate labor force, factoris for building materials, factories of construction equipment, environment of financial supporting,… Developed countries group contains research works done in USA, Canada, UK, Hong Kong and Singapore. The second group contains countries with economic stability, sound financial bases, and have construction activities increasing growth, but poor in construction industry infrastructure. This group contains the studies from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Libya, UAE, Malaysia and Thailand. While the third group contains studies conducted in developing countries. Developing countries have unstable economic situation and poor construction, industry infrastructure. This group contains studies conducted in Egypt, Ghana, Zambia and Pakistan.

Table 3 shows the used previous studies and categorises groups: developed, fast growth and developing countries.

Table 3: studies groups as per economical and industry conditions

As discussed earlier, the top (T) and highly (H) ranked delay causes for each group only listed. Research conducted in developed countries revealed that the top ranked delay causes for this group are: Change orders

Foundation , unforeseen and ground conditions Labor Supply

Shortage or Delay of Material submittals or delivery Subcontractors

Waiting for Information Weather condition

Poor site management and supervision Necessary variations disputes/ conflicts Building permits approval process Changes in drawings and specifications

However, in developing countries, the important causes of delays for this group are:

Contractor financial & cash flow problems

Conflict and lack of communication between parties Design errors, mistakes and Changes

Equipment availability and failure Difficulties in planning and scheduling Inadequate contractor experience

Inappropriate owner representative management style Labor and technical staff un-availability

shortage of materials and material management problems Owner financial problems

Slowdown of the owner decision making Subcontractors

The important causes of delays in the fast economic growth countries listed as following:

Contractor financial & cash flow problems Change orders

Deficiencies in contractors organisation & management Design changes & modifications

Difficulties in planning and scheduling Disputes and claims

Shortage or delay of material submittals or delivery of imported materials Inflation

shortage of labour supply & qualified & technical workers Owner financial problems

Poor contract management Subcontractors and suppliers Weather condition

Seventeen delay causes ranked as top and highly ranked delay causes globally around the world for the three groups. Table 4 shows the top delay causes for the tree groups.

Only three delay causes have ranked as important in all countries, which are: shortage of materials materials availability

labour and technical staff availability subcontractors related problems

Table 4: important common delay causes in the three groups of economical situation

A = developed countries

B = fast economical countries C = developing countries

These three delay causes are the main resources for construction industry. While the construction management delay causes (design changes and difficulty in planning and scheduling) have been highly ranked in developing and fast economical countries while have no high effect on developed countries. The financial situation have been recorded as highly ranked in fast economical economy and developing counties while it has no high effect on developed countries.

The difference in importance or influence of delay causes between developed countries and the developing countries is mainly due to the construction industry environment. In developed countries, the industry infrastructure is available in terms of construction material factories, training institutions, technical institutions and public funds. In developing countries, there is shortage of construction industry infrastructure. Mot of construction materials and equipment still imported from outside the country. The shortage of funding, especially from the public sector is noticeable in most of the developing countries.

It should noticed that the construction economic and industry environment have high influence of time performance in construction projects.

Delay causes in the developed countries is related to the project conditions more than the micro conditions, while micro conditions have more influence in developed countries To enhance time performance and mitigate delay occurrence, it is recommended to enhance construction industry infrastructure, contacting procedures, funding organization and facilities and relationship between projects parties should be revised especially in developing countries.

To enhance time performance and mitigate delay occurrence in developed countries, it is recommend concentrating in revising project contracting more than micro and general environment changes.

CONCLUSION

Most of the previous delay analysis studies conducted globally aimed to determine the causes of delay and rank them. These studies conducted mainly by asking construction industry personnel to use their own judgement to rank or assess the importance of a set of predefined causes of delay. The delay causes ranking is different from a country to another. There were three problems to deal with previous studies results and to examine if there are common delay causes globally. These problems are the different economical situation for the countries that the studies conducted in, participants and number of delay causes surveyed. A procedure introduced to use the delay causes ranking results globally. The analysis of delay studies results revealed that the delay causes ranking is very sensitive to economic, contractual and technical status of the country status. The delay causes in the developed countries related mainly to the project conditions more than the micro conditions, while the delay causes in the developing countries related to the micro conditions such as materials availability, technical and funding availability. There are three delay causes seems to be common all over the world. These delay causes are shortage of materials, shortage of labours and problems resulted from suppliers and subcontractors. Any attempt to mitigate effect of delay causes should consider this result.

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