Causes of Delay in Building Construction Projects in Egypt
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 134, Issue 11
Abstract
Delay in construction projects is considered one of the most common problems causing a multitude of negative effects on the project and its participating parties. This paper aims to identify the main causes of delay in construction projects in Egypt from the point of view of contractors, consultants, and owners. A literature review was conducted to compile a list of delay causes that was purged based on appropriateness to Egypt in seven semistructured interviews. The resulting list of delay causes was subjected to a questionnaire survey for quantitative confirmation and identification of the most important causes of delay. The overall results indicated that the most important causes are: financing by contractor during construction, delays in contractor’s payment by owner, design changes by owner or his agent during construction, partial payments during construction, and nonutilization of professional construction/contractual management. The contractor and owner were found to have opposing views, mostly blaming one another for delays, while the consultant was seen as having a more intermediate view. Results’ analyses suggest that in order to significantly reduce delay a joint effort based on teamwork is required. Furthermore, causes of project delay were discussed based on the type and size of the project.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
Abdul-Rahman, H., Berawi, M. A., Berawi, A. R., Mohamed, O., Othman, M., and Yahya, I. A. (2006). “Delay mitigation in the Malaysian construction industry.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 132(2), 125–133.
Ahmed, A. G. (2003). “Assessment of construction contracting companies performance in Egypt.” Ph.D. thesis, Zagazig Univ., Zagazig, Egypt.
Ahmed, S. M., Azhar, S., Kappagantula, P., and Gollapudi, D. (2003). “Delays in construction: A brief study of the Florida construction industry.” ASC Proc., 39th Annual Conf., Clemson Univ., Clemson, S.C., 257–266.
Alwi, S., and Hampson, K. (2003). “Identifying the important causes of delays in building construction projects.” Proc., 9th East Asia-Pacific Conf. on Structural Engineering and Construction, Bali, Indonesia, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia.
Amer, W. H. (1994). “Analysis and evaluation of delays in construction projects in Egypt.” Master thesis, Zagazig Univ., Zagazig, Egypt.
Assaf, S. A., and Al-Hejji, S. (2006). “Causes of delay in large construction projects.” Int. J. Proj. Manage., 24(4), 349–357.
Assaf, S. A., Al-Khalil, M., and Al-Hazmi, M. (1995). “Causes of delay in large building construction projects.” J. Manage. Eng., 11(2), 45–50.
Ayyub, B. A., and McCuen, R. H. (1997). Probability, statistics and reliability for engineers, 2nd Ed., Chapman and Hall/CRC Press, Boca Raton, Fla.
Baldwin, J. R., Manthei, J. M., Rothbart, H., and Harris, R. B. (1971). “Causes of delay in the construction industry.” J. Constr. Div. 97(2), 177–187.
Choudhury, I., and Phatak, O. (2004). “Correlates of time overrun in commercial construction.” ASC Proc., 40th Annual Conf., Brigham Young Univ., Provo, Utah.
Guest, G., Bunce, A., and Johnsons, L. (2006). “How many interviews are enough? An experiment with data saturation and variability.” Field Methods, 18(1), 59–82.
Mansfield, N. R., Ugwu, O. O., and Doran, T. (1994). “Causes of delay and cost over runs in Nigerian construction projects.” Int. J. Proj. Manage., 12(4), 254–260.
Mobarak, M. S. (2004). “Consultations in stumble of large projects.” World Econ., 146, 96 (in Arabic).
Noulmanee, A., Wachirathamrojn, J., Tantichattanont, P., and Sittivijan, P. (2000). “Internal cause of delay in highway construction project in Thailand.” ⟨http://www.languages.ait.ac.th/talkbasework/july99/construction.htm⟩.
Zack, J. G., (2003). “Schedule delay analysis; is there agreement?” Proc., PMI-CPM College of Performance Spring Conf. ⟨http://www.pmi-cpm.org/public/news_events/2003_spring_conf/index.html⟩, May 7–9, 2003, Project Management Institute—College of Performance Management, New Orleans.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 134 • Issue 11 • November 2008
Pages: 831 - 841
Copyright
© 2008 ASCE.
History
Received: Sep 29, 2006
Accepted: May 8, 2008
Published online: Nov 1, 2008
Published in print: Nov 2008
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.