International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 4, Issue 5, May 2014)

Delay Analysis in Construction Project

Aditi Dinakar
Non-excusable delays are delays, which the contractor
either causes or assumes the risk for. Excusable noncompensable delays are delays caused by factors that are
not foreseeable, beyond the contractors reasonable control
and not attributable to the contractors fault or negligence.
Compensable excusable delays these are compensable
delays are excusable delays, suspensions, or interruptions
to all or part of the work caused by an act or failure to act
by the owner resulting from owners breach of an
obligation, stated or implied, in the contract. Concurrent
delays occur when both owner and the contractor are
responsible for the delay.

Abstract Delay of a construction project is defined as late

completion of the project as compared to the planned
schedule. Construction delays are often result of
miscommunication between contractors, subcontractors,
owners and suppliers. These types of unrealistic exceptions
are usually avoided by using a clean and efficient planning
mechanism, which clearly specifies the work and timetable to
be used. Delays in construction projects are quite expensive;
sometimes they may result in severe damages to the involved
parties. This dissertation focuses on study of core factors that
are causing delays and analyzing the day-to-day records to
minimize delays.
The current study is undertaken on Construction of New
District Jail in Kurnool District of Andhra Pradesh. The
project is construction of 2 Nos. of Barracks and is scheduled
to complete in 12 Months. The study is being conducted on
various factors that were causing the delays in project.
The causes, effects and the various methods on how to
minimize the delays in the construction site are noted down
regularly. Construction delays can be minimized only when
their cause are identified in the construction site.
The day-to-day data is regularly collected from site.
Starting time, Finishing time, and duration is recorded in MS
Project differentiating task and critical activity along with the
delays caused and reasons for the delays. Using the input data
and the Gantt charts generated by MS Project the delays in
critical activity of the project are analyzed. A questionnaire is
prepared listing out various factors contributing to delay
under different categories based on observations at
construction site and from several journal papers as
reference. The views on the same from various parties
involved in a project like the builder/developer, contractor
and consultants are sought in the questionnaire. Each factor is
given a weight-age arrived at using filled-up questionnaires,
using, which the most influential factors are identified

I.I Problem Statement

Many construction projects have faced various problems
and delay of time is one of the major problems. The delay
in dispute settlement has manifold effects such as it will
give detrimental to the relationship between owner and
contractor.
The contractor and the owner pay for the extra charge
for the completion of the project due to delay in large
construction projects. When the completion time of the
construction project exceeds the agreed completion time, it
is known as construction project delay. It is needed to
conduct detailed investigation and identification of delay
factors and then selecting the right actions to counter theses
delay factors within cost and maintaining quality. The
faults and errors due to the contractor cause delays and
waste of capital and time
The current study focuses on various factors causing the
delays particularly in far off places where resources should
be transported from far off places which require more time
and money and where fresh work need to be done right
from the excavation like removing trees and blasting few
places which cannot be excavated by machinery. This study
attempts to generalize.
1. To identify various causes of the delays
2. How unpredicted delays can cause delays resulting in
delays of the total project
3. The effects of the delays on the project
4. Study the causes and effects of the delays at various
projects and to find out the most important causes.

Keywords Delays in construction project, causes for

delays, impact of delays on Construction project.

I. INTRODUCTION
In construction, the word delay refers to something
happening at a later time than planned, expected, specified
in a contract or beyond the date that the parties agreed upon
for the delivery of a project. Delay is the slowing down of
work without stopping construction entirely and that can
lead to time overrun either beyond the contract date or
beyond the date that the parties have agreed upon for the
delivery of the project. Delays classified into nonexcusable delays, excusable non compensable delays,
excusable compensable delays and concurrent delays.
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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 4, Issue 5, May 2014)
Earthquakes, landslides, tornados, hurricanes,
lightning, floods, etc., are all examples of acts of God.
Note, however, that mere bad weather does not
qualify as an act of God.
5. Owner-directed changes
6. Errors and omissions in the plans and specifications
7. Differing site conditions or concealed conditions
8. Unusually severe weather
Non-excusable delays are events that are within the
contractors control or that are foreseeable. These are some
examples or non-excusable delays:

II. DELAYS
There are three basic ways to categorize type of delays:
Critical and noncritical
Excusable and Non-excusable
Compensable and non-compensable
II.I Critical And Non-Critical Delays
Delays that affect the project completion or in some
cases a milestone date are considered as critical delays and
delays that do not affect the project completion or a
milestone date are considered as noncritical delays. If these
activities are delayed, the project completion date or a
milestone later will be delayed. The determining which
activities truly control the project completion date depends
on the following:
1. The project itself
2. The contractors plan and schedule (particularly the
critical path)
3. The requirement of the contract for sequence and
phasing
4. The physical constraint of the project, i.e. how to
build the job from a practical
5. Perspective.

1. Late performance of sub-contractors

2. Untimely performance by suppliers
3. Faulty workmanship by the contractor or subcontractors
4. A project-specific labor strike caused by either the
contractors unwillingness to meet with labor
representative or by unfair labor practice
II.II Compensable And Non-Compensable Delays
A compensable delay is a delay where the contractor is
entitled to a time extension and to additional compensation.
Relating back to the excusable and non-excusable delays,
only excusable delays can be compensable. Noncompensable delays mean that although an excusable delay
may have occurred, the contractor is not entitled to any
added compensation resulting from the excusable delay.
Thus, the question of whether a delay is compensable must
be answered. Additionally, a non-excusable delay warrants
neither additional compensation nor a time extension.

II.I Excusable And Non-Excusable Delays

All delays are either excusable or non-excusable. An
excusable delay is a delay that is due to an unforeseeable
event beyond the contractors or the subcontractors
control. Normally, based on common general provisions in
public agency specifications, delays resulting from the
following events would be considered excusable:
1. General labor strikes - Strikes and labor unrest are
frequent causes of delay on construction projects.
However, that not all strikes are considered excusable
delays. Generally, a contract clause listing strikes as
an excusable delay also carries a qualification that the
cause for the delay must have been unforeseen and
beyond the control of the contractor. Strikes that are
foreseeable at the time of signing the contract are not
considered excusable causes of delay.
2. Fires
3. Floods
4. Act of God - An act of God is a natural occurrence
caused directly and exclusively by natural forces
without any human intervention, which could not
have been reasonably foreseen, nor could have been
prevented.

II.III Delay Analysis Techniques

Whether or not a delay is compensable depends
primarily on the terms of the contract. In the most cases, a
contract specifically notes the kinds of delays that are noncompensable, for which the contractor does not receive any
additional money but may be allowed a time extension.
Delay analysis is a analytical process that should be
employed with project documentation along with collected
data from project site. The selection of delay analysis
depends on the variety of factors and the available records.
There are five commonly used delay techniques.
1. Impacted as-planned method
2. Time impact analysis method
3. Collapsed as-built or but-for analysis method
4. Snapshot/windows/time slice analysis method
5. As-planned versus as-built windows analysis method

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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 4, Issue 5, May 2014)
Further, this progressive structure of the scale is such
that each successive Likert item is treated as indicating a
better response than the preceding value. (This may differ
in cases where reverse ordering of the Likert Scale is
needed).
The second, and possibly more important point is
whether the distance between each successive item
category is equivalent, which is inferred traditionally. For
example, in the above five-point Likert item, the inference
is that the distance between category 1 and 2 is the same
as between category 3 and 4. In terms of good research
practice, an equidistant presentation by the researcher is
important; otherwise a bias in the analysis may result. For
example, a four-point Likert item with categories "Poor",
"Average", "Good", and "Very Good" is unlikely to have
all equidistant categories since there is only one category
that can receive a below average rating. This would
arguably bias any result in favor of a positive outcome. On
the other hand, even if a researcher presents what he or she
believes are equidistant categories, it may not be
interpreted as such by the respondent.
A good Likert scale, as above, will present symmetry of
categories about a midpoint with clearly defined linguistic
qualifiers. In such symmetric scaling, equidistant attributes
will typically be more clearly observed or, at least, inferred.
It is when a Likert scale is symmetric and equidistant that it
will behave more like an interval-level measurement. So
while a Likert scale is indeed ordinal, if well presented it
may
nevertheless
approximate
an
interval-level
measurement. This can be beneficial since, if it was treated
just as an ordinal scale, then some valuable information
could be lost if the distance between Likert items were
not available for consideration. The important idea here is
that the appropriate type of analysis is dependent on how
the Likert scale has been presented. Notions of central
tendency are often applicable at the item level - that is
responses often show a quasi-normal distribution. The
validity of such measures depends on the underlying
interval nature of the scale.
Responses to several Likert questions may be summed
providing that all questions use the same Likert scale and
that the scale is a defensible approximation to an interval
scale, in which case the Central Limit Theorem allows
treatment of the data as interval data measuring a latent
variable. If the summed responses fulfill these assumptions,
parametric statistical tests such as the analysis of variance
can be applied. Typical cutoffs for thinking that this
approximation will be acceptable is a minimum of 4 and
preferably 8 items in the sum.

III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

III.I Questionnaire Methodology
The Survey is designed based to use Likert Scale on the
objective of the study to find out the causes of delays in
construction projects and effect of the delays on overall
project. The Survey is framed in such a way that the
personal view of different people involved in different
projects is collected and analyzed. The questionnaire
basically consists of four sections as detailed below.
1. Respondent Background - This is to collect the basic
information of the respondent
2. Causes of Delays - This is used to collect the data on
different causes of the delays happened in that
particular project.
3. Effects of Delays - Using these questions the effects
of the delays on the project are identified.
4. Measures for Minimizing Delays - The last part of the
survey consists of questions regarding the methods
they used to reduce the delays if any.
The collected data is analyzed using Minitab software to
find out the major causes of delay, the effects of the delay
and how to minimize the delay of a construction project.
III.III Scoring And Analysis
After the questionnaire is completed, each item may be
analyzed separately or in some cases item responses may
be summed to create a score for a group of items. Hence,
Likert scales are often called summative scales.
Whether individual Likert items can be considered as
interval-level data, or whether they should be treated, as
ordered-categorical data is the subject of considerable
disagreement in the literature, with strong convictions on
what are the most applicable methods. This disagreement
can be traced back, in many respects, to the extent to which
Likert items are interpreted as being ordinal data.
There are two primary considerations in this discussion.
First, Likert scales are arbitrary. The value assigned to a
Likert item has no objective numerical basis, either in
terms of measure theory or scale (from which a distance
metric can be determined). The value assigned to each
Likert item is simply determined by the researcher
designing the survey, who makes the decision based on a
desired level of detail. However, by convention Likert
items tend to be assigned progressive positive integer
values. Likert scales typically range from 2 to 10 with 5
or 7 being the most common.

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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 4, Issue 5, May 2014)
8. Procuring undesired or unwanted material instead
9. Problem with material transport and processing at site

IV. QUESTIONNAIRE
The questions about the causes for delays are divided
into 7 sections containing 9 questions each. The respondent
is asked to rank each of the following questions.

Group-E Equipment Contributed Factors

1. Equipment breakdowns
2. Shortage of equipment
3. Low level of equipment-operator's skill
4. Low productivity and efficiency of equipment
5. Lack of heavy equipment when needed
6. Wrong kind or verity of equipment
7. Lack of hi-tech and advanced equipment
8. Unavailability of special equipment
9. Difficulty in transporting equipment

Group-A Owner Contributed Factors

1. Delay in progress payments
2. Delay to furnish and deliver the site
3. Change orders by owner during construction
4. Late in revising and approving design documents
5. Delay in approving shop drawing and sample
materials
6. Poor communication and coordination
7. Slowness in decision-making process
8. Conflicts between joint-ownership of the project
9. Suspension of work by owner

Group-F Labor Contributed Factors

1. Shortage of labors
2. Working permit of labors
3. Low productivity level of labors
4. Personal conflicts among labors
5. High labor wages
6. Labor exodus
7. Labor strikes at site
8. Labor health problem when working in hazardous
conditions
9. Labor Safety problems

Group-B Contractor Contributed Factors

1. Difficulties in financing project
2. Conflicts in sub-contractors schedule in execution of
project
3. Rework due to errors during construction
4. Conflicts between contractor and other parties
5. Poor communication and coordination
6. Ineffective planning and scheduling of project
7. Improper construction methods implement
8. Delays in sub-contractors work
9. Inadequate contractor's work

Group-G External Factors

1. Effects of subsurface and ground conditions factors
2. Delay in obtaining permits from municipality
3. Weather effect on construction activities
4. Traffic control and restriction at job site
5. Accident during construction
6. Changes in government regulations and laws
7. Delay in providing services from utilities
8. Delay in performing final inspection and certification
9. Civil unrest and public strikes

Group-C Consultant Contributed Factors

1. Delay in approving major changes in the scope of
work
2. Poor communication and coordination
3. Inadequate experience of consultant
4. Mistakes and discrepancies in design documents
5. Delays in producing design documents
6. Unclear and inadequate details in drawings
7. Insufficient data collection and survey before design
8. Un-use of advanced engineering design software
9. Conflicts with other parties and financial problems

Respondents are also asked to give their opinion on the

effects of delays. 6 Questions were asked in this section.
1. Time overrun
2. Cost overrun
3. Dispute
4. Arbitration
5. Total abandonment
6. Litigation

Group-D Material Contributed Factors

1. Shortage of construction materials in market
2. Changes in material types during construction
3. Delay in material delivery
4. Damage of sorted material while they are needed
urgently
5. Delay in manufacturing special building materials
6. Late procurement of materials
7. Quality problem with procured material

The last section includes questions about the steps that

should be taken to avoid delays in construction project.
1. This section consists of 12 questions.
2. Frequent progress meeting
3. Use up-to-date technology utilization
4. Use proper and modern construction
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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 4, Issue 5, May 2014)
5. Use appropriate construction methods
6. Effective strategic planning
7. Proper material procurement
8. Accurate initial cost estimates
9. Clear information and communication channels
10. Frequent coordination between the parties involved
11. Proper emphasis on past experience
12. Proper project planning and scheduling
13. Complete and proper design at the right time

The majority of people rated improper communication

between the involved parties as the major problem while
external reasons like lack of qualified labor, equipment and
material when needed comes next in row. After analyzing
the data it is clear that the contribution of Contractor in
delay of the construction project is more than the client and
consultant side. And the external factors contribute the least
in delay of construction project.
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Aibinu, A. A. and Jagboro,G.O.(2002).The Effects of Construction

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V. ANALYSIS
The collected responses from different categories of
people involved in construction project. The mean of each
group of question is calculated using ANOVA analysis.
The final result showing the contribution of different
factors on the delay of a construction project is plotted on a
pie chart.

From the pie chart the contribution of various parties

involved in the project are almost same while contractor is
more slightly more for delay.
VI. CONCLUSION
The responses collected from the respondents make it
evident that almost all parties holds nearly equal
responsibility for the delays in project.

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