Samarghandi, Hamed and Tabatabae, Seyed Mohammad Moosavi and Taabayan, Pouria and Hashemi, Ahmad Mir and Willoughby, Keith
(2016)
Studying the Reasons for Delay and Cost Overrun in Construction
Projects: The Case of Iran.
Journal of Construction in Developing Countries , 21 (1).
pp. 51-84.
ISSN 1823-6499
Abstract
Undesirable delays in construction projects impose excessive costs and precipitate
exacerbated durations. Investigating Iran, a developing Middle Eastern country, this paper
focuses on the reasons for construction project delays. We conducted several interviews with
owners, contractors, consultants, industry experts and regulatory bodies to accurately
ascertain specific delay factors. Based on the results of our industry surveys, a statistical
model was developed to quantitatively determine each delay factor's importance in
construction project management. The statistical model categorises the delay factors under
four major classes and determines the most significant delay factors in each class: owner
defects, contractor defects, consultant defects and law, regulation and other general
defects. The most significant delay factors in the owner defects category are lack of
attention to inflation and inefficient budgeting schedule. In the contractor defects category,
the most significant delay factors are inaccurate budgeting and resource planning, weak
cash flow and inaccurate pricing and bidding. As for the consultant defects delay factors
such as inaccurate first draft and inaccuracies in technical documents have the most
contribution to the defects. On the other hand, outdated standard mandatory items in cost
lists, outdated mandatory terms in contracts and weak governmental budgeting are the
most important delay factors in the law, regulation and other general defects. Moreover,
regression models demonstrate that a significant difference exists between the initial and
final project duration and cost. According to the models, the average delay per year is 5.9
months and the overall cost overrun is 15.4%. Our findings can be useful in at least two ways:
first, resolving the root causes of particularly important delay factors would significantly
streamline project performance and second, the regression models could assist project
managers and companies with revising initial timelines and estimated costs. This study does
not consider all types of construction projects in Iran: the scope is limited to certain types of
private and publicly funded projects as will be described. The data for this study has been
gathered through a detailed questionnaire survey
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