Critical Causes of Delay in Residential Construction Projects: Case Study of Central Gujarat Region of India

Delays are unique one in every of the largest issues construction companies are facing today. Delays will result in several negative effects like lawsuits between house owners and contractors, exaggerated prices, loss of productivity and revenue, and contract termination. Thus, comprehensive study on delays in construction projects is important. Present study works on identification and ranking of causes of delay in residential construction projects in Indian context. This paper identifies the causes of delays in residential construction projects of Indian construction industry. Total 59 causes were identified under 9 major groups. Total 50 respondents comprises of 20 developers, 17 contractors and 13 architects who participated in this field survey. This paper suggests an approach to carry out ranking of causes of delay by two different techniques: Relative importance index and Importance index based on degree of severity and degree of frequency and also discuss about the ranking of the causes. Results were shows that out of top 10 factors total 5 factors were common in ranking by both methods. They were original contract duration is too short, shortage of labours, delay in material delivery, low productivity level of labours, delay in progress payments by owner. Moreover, by both methods labour related factors ranked first while external factor was considered having least effect on delay as it is ranked last. All three parties agreed on that labour related factor was most important while external factor was least important. It is hoped that the findings of the paper will help the stakeholders to act on critical causes and further try to reduce delay of their projects. Keywords— Causes of delay, Construction industry, India, Relative importance index, Importance index.