Causes of Construction Delays for Engineering Projects: An Egyptian Perspective

The construction industry in the Middle-East in general and in Egypt in particular has an important role in the economic growth of these countries. However, time overruns are a repetitive phenomenon in these construction industries. Very few studies addressed the causes of construction delays for construction projects in this area. This paper focuses on the causes of construction delays in the Egyptian construction industry. The first main objective of the research is to identify and rank the major causes of delays for engineering projects. The second main objective is to determine the party responsible for the main causes of delays. The research was conducted in three phases. The first phase included unstructured interviews with practitioners involved in the Egyptian construction industry. The second phase consisted of a survey for a sample of thirty-five (35) professional experts using a customized questionnaire. These experts represented the different parties of the construction industry; namely, the Contractor, the Employer, and the Consultant/ Project Manager. The third phase of the research covered the analysis of the data collected, in order to determine the frequency and ranking of the causes of delays. The analysis of the results also included the party responsible of the different causes. The results revealed that the causes of delays can be grouped into five (5) main categories: 1) Construction related causes 2) Managerial related causes 3) Political related causes 4) Financial related causes 5) Technical related causes. The top 12 causes included 3 construction, 7 managerial, 1 political and 1 financial related causes. The contractor and the Employer were found to be responsible each of 5 of the top 12 causes. The remaining two were found to be the responsibility of a third party