Time and Cost Overrun in Construction Projects in Ecuador: Main Causes and Risk Factors
Publication: Construction Research Congress 2024
ABSTRACT
The analysis of the causes of time and cost overruns in construction projects has attracted much attention worldwide in recent decades. These causes usually vary from country to country and depend on aspects such as the kind of project, the environment, the construction company’s features, etc. This study aims to identify the main causes of delay and cost overrun in Ecuador’s construction projects and analyze the main factors influencing their occurrence. A total of 72 causes were collected from a literature review. Through the Delphi method, a group of experts identified Ecuador’s most important causes. Subsequently, the information from 53 civil engineering and building projects was gathered through a questionnaire survey to identify and evaluate the risks of project delays and cost overruns perceived by construction professionals in Ecuador. Descriptive statistics and non-parametric analyses were performed. Results highlighted that the main causes of time and cost overrun are the weather, unexpected conditions in the construction site, design changes from the owner, incomplete drawings, and mistakes or incomplete designs. However, these results vary significantly depending on the project type and the company size.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this chapter.
REFERENCES
Abd El-Razek, M. E., Bassioni, H. A., and Mobarak, A. M. (2008). “Causes of delay in building construction projects in Egypt.” Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 134(11), 831–841.
Aibinu, A. A., and Odeyinka, H. A. (2006). “Construction Delays and Their Causative Factors in Nigeria.” Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 132(7), 667–677.
Amoatey, C. T., Ameyaw, Y. A., Adaku, E., and Famiyeh, S. (2015). “Analysing delay causes and effects in Ghanaian state housing construction projects.” International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 8(1), 198–214.
Aziz, R. (2013). “Factors causing cost variation for constructing wastewater projects in Egypt.” Alexandria Engineering Journal, 52(1), 51–66.
Banco Central del Ecuador. (2020). Estadísticas macroeconómicas presentación coyuntural.
Cheng, Y.-M. (2014). “An exploration into cost-influencing factors on construction projects.” International Journal of Project Management, 32(5), 850–860.
Emuze, F., Smallwood, J., and Han, S. (2014). “Factors contributing to non-value adding activities in South African construction.” Journal of Engineering, Design and Technology, 12(2), 223–243.
Field, A. (2013). Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS Statistics. SAGE Publications, Los Angeles.
Giel, B. K., and Issa, R. R. A. (2013). “Return on Investment Analysis of Using Building Information Modeling in Construction.” Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, 27(5), 511–521.
Gómez-Cabrera, A., Sanz-Benlloch, A., Montalban-Domingo, L., Ponz-Tienda, J. L., and Pellicer, E. (2020). “Identification of factors affecting the performance of rural road projects in Colombia.” Sustainability, 12(7377), 1–18.
González, P., González, V., Molenaar, K., and Orozco, F. (2014). “Analysis of Causes of Delay and Time Performance in Construction Projects.” Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 140(1), 04013027.
Gransberg, D. D., and Barton, R. F. (2007). “Analysis of federal design-build request for proposal evaluation criteria.” Journal of Management in Engineering, 23(2), 105–111.
Gündüz, M., Nielsen, Y., and Özdemir, M. (2013). “Quantification of Delay Factors Using the Relative Importance Index Method for Construction Projects in Turkey.” Journal of Management in Engineering, 29(2), 133–139.
Heravi, G., and Mohammadian, M. (2017). “Cost Overruns and Delay in Municipal Cons t ruction Projects in Developing Countries.” AUT Journal of Civil Engineering, 1(1), 31–38.
Larsen, J. K., Shen, G. Q., Lindhard, S. M., and Brunoe, T. D. (2016). “Factors Affecting Schedule Delay, Cost Overrun, and Quality Level in Public Construction Projects.” Journal of Management in Engineering, 32(1).
Long, N. D., Ogunlana, S., Quang, T., and Lam, K. C. (2004). “Large construction projects in developing countries: A case study from Vietnam.” International Journal of Project Management, 22, 553–561.
Santoso, D. S., and Soeng, S. (2016). “Analyzing Delays of Road Construction Projects in Cambodia: Causes and Effects.” Journal of Management in Engineering, 32(6), 1–11.
Stanford, M. S., Molenaar, K. R., and Sheeran, K. M. (2016). “Application of Indefinite Delivery–Indefinite Quantity construction strategies at the federal level.” Journal of Management in Engineering, American Society of Civil Engineers, 32(5), 04016011.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Construction Research Congress 2024
Pages: 238 - 244
History
Published online: Mar 18, 2024
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.