Factors Causing the Time Delay in Projects: Empirical Evidence from Pakistani Construction Industry

Construction firms are of crucial importance when it comes to the development of the nation. Given the complex web of communication and sets of preferences, the construction industry faces innumerable challenges. Of most criticalities that are commonly observed in the industry, it is the time overrun that accounts for most of the adversities faced by the construction industry of Pakistan. These factors may include communication and coordination factors, contract management factors, design and documentation factors, and finance management factors. The concurrent study aims to determine the magnitude and prioritize these designated factors upon the time overruns in the surveyed firms that may further lead to delineations such as cost overruns. To accomplish the research objectives a survey was carried out, being based upon 113 construction projects being run under supervision of respective firms. As per our deduction it was the lack of coordination in the design phase that did account for the time delays in the subjected firms. While contract management factors marked the poor project management as the leading factor to cause the time related adversities. In the similar context, design and documentation factors classified the design changes during construction as important consideration. Whereas finance management factors indicated the monthly payment difficulties from the agencies to lead to the time delay in the construction projects on the national scale. The concurrent study is of vital importance in terms of bridging the contextual gap by surveying the construction firms in a developing nation such as Pakistan. Moreover, the theoretical progression was addressed by the current study by including the designated factors cumulatively in a single model and testing for them statistically.