Abstract—Delays are one of the biggest problems in construction projects in developing countries, as cause a negative effects on the projects. Delays can be minimized only when their causes are identified. The aim of this paper is to identify the main causes and effects of delay in Iranian construction projects. The literature related the field of causes and effects of delay in construction projects has been reviewed over the last decade. A questionnaire survey was conducted to solicit the causes and effect of delay from consultants and contractors’ viewpoint. This study identified 10 most important causes of delay from a list of 28 different causes of delay and 6 different effects of delay. The elements of this list has identified on the basis of literature review over the last decade. The perspective of contractors and consultants has been analysed to rank the causes of delays based on their Relative Importance Index. The 10 most causes of delay were: (1) delay in progress payment by client, (2) change orders by client during construction, (3) poor site management, (4) slowness in decision making process by client, (5) financial difficulties by contractors, (6) late in reviewing and approving design documents by client, (7) problems with subcontractors, (8) ineffective planning and scheduling of project by contractor, (9) mistakes and discrepancies in design documents, and (10) bad weather. Six major effects of delay were: (1) time overrun, (2) cost overrun, (3) disputes, (4) total abandonment (5) arbitration, and (6) litigation. The paper predicts some future trends and suggests certain areas in which future research on construction projects should be focused.
Index Terms—Causes of delay, effects of delay, Iran, construction project.
The authors are with Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (The National University of Malaysia), 43600 UKM, Bangi, Malaysia(e-mail: towhid@eng.ukm.my; abim@eng.ukm.my).
Cite: Towhid Pourrostam and Amiruddin Ismail, "Causes and Effects of Delay in Iranian Construction Projects," International Journal of Engineering and Technology vol. 4, no. 5, pp. 598-601, 2012.
Copyright © 2008-2024. International Journal of Engineering and Technology. All rights reserved.
E-mail: ijet_Editor@126.com