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A voluminous amount of research has been conducted on project delay in the recent past; however, the persistence of the problem demands that a relentless quest for solutions is upheld. It can be argued that the problem is likely to be more pronounced in areas where development pressure is the highest. One such area is the United Arab Emirates (UAE) where the construction industry is said to have reached an unparalleled position in the last decade. The purpose of this paper is to identify the most significant causes of delays in the UAE construction industry.

A survey was conducted targeting three key types of stakeholders, namely clients, contractors and consultants. Validity and reliability were achieved by first assessing the plausibility of construction delay variables in UAE. The verification took place after the interpretation of quantitative data, this involved presenting the findings to the main participants. The validation took place after the verification process. Rigour was achieved by engaging participants previously engaged in UAE and focussing on verification and validation, this included responsiveness of the researchers during group discussions, methodological coherence, appropriate sampling frame and data analysis.

From the analysis, the study unveiled a number of important causes of construction delays in the UAE, ranging from unrealistic contract durations to poor labour productivity, with consultants and clients seemingly shouldering the bulk of the “blame game”. It was evident that all the three main stakeholders in a construction project (clients, consultants and contractors) need to change their existing practices in order to ensure timely delivery of projects. The research also confirms that delays are country specific and appear to be time related hence they should be viewed within the social, economic and cultural settings of the UAE.

A major limitation of the current study was the use of a single approach to facilitate data collection.

It was evident that practitioners need to change their existing practices in order to ensure timely delivery of projects. Continuous coordination and relationship between practitioners are required through the project life cycle in order to solve problems and develop project performance.

As suggested in this study methods should be put in place to reduce long and bureaucratic processes within the client’s organisations, not only to fulfil the requirements of the contract but also to suite fast-track projects.

Compared to the manufacturing industry, Lean Six Sigma (LSS) lacks a clear methodology for its application in the tertiary service. One reason is the difficulties to assess information flow compared to physical flow. Indeed, the use of information flow as a process entry in the LSS method is not well investigated, mainly due to the difficulties in collecting adequate and sufficient data. The purpose of this research study is to investigate the application of LSS in the tertiary service, in particular, real estate development.

The paper is based on an action research methodology where LSS methodology is applied to solve client-dissatisfaction issue. One of its main causes is found to be the late delivery time. The work describes how the method was applied.

LSS is an adequate approach for making well-thought-out improvement in real estate development.

The work provides an implementation of LSS in real estate development. It also gives new insights into the LSS application in the tertiary service. The work also suggests practical recommendations and solutions to address the main challenges faced by real estate development.

Construction is governed by many processes that are difficult to identify and, even more, to assess. LSS helps identifying those which create real value for the client.

The aim of this paper is to study the effect of strategic and project related potential risks on project delivery in Qatar. Two objectives have been defined. The first is to identify potential risk indicators (manifest variables) and categorize them (constructs/latent variables) based on a literature review, while the second is to examine and rank the relationships between the indicators and constructs by developing a structural equation model.

Twenty-five indicators were identified from the literature review and categorized into five groups. To collect the data, an online questionnaire was distributed in Qatar, and 116 responses were obtained. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to examine the model. The model that was developed based on the research hypothesis met goodness-of-fit, reliability and validity requirements.

The results showed that all constructs contributed well to the model and that the project parties (PPs) have the highest contribution with an effect weight of 0.209 followed by economic and legal (EL) conditions with an effect weight of 0.205. Site and safety (SS) conditions were third with an effect weight of 0.200 while environmental, natural and technological (ENT) conditions were fourth with an effect weight of 0.1989. The last ranked construct is political and social (PS) conditions with an effect weight of 0.186. Based on the outcome of the SEM, recommendations were provided to industry professionals in Qatar about mitigating the impact of potential risks on construction project.

To the authors' best knowledge, this is the first study to quantify the effects of strategic and project related risks on a construction project using SEM, considering the risk management indicators of SS, EL, ENT, PS in Qatar. The study's practical implications are to enlarge the project's risk management plan by considering the strategic and project related risks to enhance the project performance for the cost overrun and delay. The study is intended for construction projects in Qatar, but it can easily be adapted to other parts of the world given the local circumstances.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the theory and practice of project management in the construction industry by identifying the primary causes and extracting the underlying causes of construction delays and providing recommendations on delay mitigation measures.

AA survey was used to identify the importance of 47 causes of delays. The relative importance index was used to rank them, factor analysis was applied to extract the underlying causes and focus group interviews were used for discussion and development of mitigation measures.

Six of the ten most important causes are in the top ten universal delays in construction projects. Factor analysis revealed six underlying causes: improper planning, poor consultant performance, inefficient site management, owner influence, bureaucracy and sub-standard contracts.

The owner/sponsor/client must have adequate engineering and project management skills to be able to evaluate proposals and contractors more accurately, economically and technically. The bidding and contract award process should focus on the most economically advantageous proposal and contracts should provide for mechanisms for managing risks while executing projects. Contractors should select reliable, high-quality subcontractors and suppliers and should have competent site managers.

This work expands and improves the understanding of the causes of delays in construction projects by providing an empirical study of the causes of delays and respective mitigation measures in Portugal.

The delivery of construction projects in Malaysia is plagued by time overruns, which turns what should have been successful projects into those incurring additional costs, or money-losing ventures; as well as leading to various other unexpected negative effects and faute de mieux situations. The purpose of this research is to assess those factors leading to time overrun in Malaysian construction projects. The perceptions of public and private sectors, contractors, clients, and consultants are compared relative to a list of factors derived from the review of extant literature in project delay.

The research data were collected through an industry-wide questionnaire survey circulated across the Malaysian construction industry. The research develops a list of 84 time overrun factors. Responses were collected from 49 clients, 51 contractors, and 105 consultants, to explore and analyse the major factors that are responsible for causing time overrun based on sectors (public and private), organisations (clients, contractors and consultants) and professional roles.

Project delays beyond contract dates are predominantly caused by contractors and are usually associated with financial factors. “Cash flow problems faced by the contractors” was found the major factor, which contributed to project delays, whereas “storage on site” was seen as the least significant factor.

It is noteworthy that the findings in this research have a regional focus; it is, therefore, suggested that readers from other sections of the world exercise caution in applying the findings. As it is believed that every construction industry has its nature, culture and regulations, these factors can change as a result of such differences.

This research provides stakeholders with information on factors, which, if properly understood, can make project delays less likely.

It is generally accepted that organisational culture is capable of influencing how project organisation performs. It can also impact on how people set individual goals and objectives, perform their roles, tasks and deploy resources to achieve set objectives. The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of organisational culture on the occurrence of rework in Nigerian construction industry.

The research adopted mixed method research using both quantitative and qualitative approaches to elicit information. Though, the result of the questionnaire survey was presented in this paper. Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify which variables measured attributes of the same underlying proportions, while descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis were used to establish the influence of organisational culture on rework.

The study identifies 14 factors as causes of rework from the result of factor analysis. The outcome also indicates that leadership style, success criteria and management style are important organisational culture dimensions. Poor management practices and lack of teamwork are found to be largely responsible for poor project delivery due to rework occurrence.

The research will be of significant benefit to both the academic and industry practitioners. The result of the research will provide academics with useful insights into the influence of organisational culture on project delivery by undertaking future research to inform better understanding. The research will also provide practitioners with good understanding of how culture within their organisations can influence the performance of their subordinates or employees. Further research is encouraged to investigate the influence of management and leadership style on project delivery in the context of Nigeria.

This study is the first attempt to investigate the influence of organisational culture on occurrence of rework empirically in the Nigerian construction industry. There is paucity of research focusing on this area as it affects project delivery.

Highway projects in India have a history of cost overruns and delay in project delivery, thus incurring huge losses to public funds. The study aimed to measure the extent of influence of various constraints on the overall success of highway projects (e.g. National highway project, state highway projects and major district roads). Based on the literature, various factors were grouped under three categories (a) Project Constraints, (b) Project Governance Constraints and (c) Stakeholder Induced Constraints.

A quantitative approach was adopted. A questionnaire-based survey was conducted with 435 respondents from the field of highway projects with a minimum experience of 1 year as Project Manager. The data was analyzed by partial least squares structural equation modeling technique.

It was identified that the impact of project constraints (ES = 0.313) on project success is more than that of project governance constraints (ES = 0.231) and stakeholder induced constraints. Additionally, it was found that project governance constraints have a strong impact on project constraints (ES = 0.535) and stakeholder induced constraints (ES = 0.403).

The study presented in this paper is first of its kind to measure and articulate the impact of project governance constraint, project constraint and stakeholder induced constraints on project success.

The international energy agency states that the world’s primary energy needs are expected to grow to 55 per cent until 2030. Therefore, oil and gas industry as the main energy source will be more crucial where building or advancing new capacities is required. Because the reports highlight the delay as a recurring problem, thereby, more in-depth investigation to find out the main contributing causes is needed.

Root cause analysis (RCA) was applied to identify, rank, analysis and categorize the main sources of this problem.

Based on RCA procedure; Pareto analysis showed that 84.7 per cent of the delay is because: the radar chart indicated no difference in perception of the participants regarding the importance of the root causes, correlation analysis suggested strong relationship among the participants and the cause-and-effect diagram emphasized more on operational, human and equipment categories, which in total account for 51.86 per cent of the delay.

The risk planners of large-scale projects can consider these root causes as the main items to analysis, monitor and control, as they are vitally important for project success.

Construction projects in India continue to suffer excessive delays. This paper aims to investigate the delay causes in India by project sector (transport, power, buildings and water) and carry out a comparative study of delay causes in design build (DB) projects with that of design bid build (DBB) projects along with mitigation measures.

A questionnaire survey was conducted among major clients, contractors and consultants in India. Importance Index was used for ranking of the delay causes. Projects were categorized based on the type, and causes of delay in each project type were identified. Projects were also categorized based on type of contract, and delay causes in DB and DBB projects were compared. Statistical analysis of responses by Cronbach’s alpha, one-way analysis of variance, Kruskal–Wallis tests was carried out with Statistical Package for Social Sciences. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with senior industry professionals to develop exhaustive mitigation measures.

The research findings indicate finance-related causes as the most critical causes of delay in Indian projects. Delay in settlement of claims, contractor’s financial difficulties, delay in payment for extra work/variations by owner, late payment from contractor to subcontractor or suppliers, variation orders/changes of scope by owner during construction and changes in design by owner were the highly ranked delay causes. The research found no significant difference in the delay causes in DB and DBB projects.

This is the first study wherein delay causes for various project types within a single country are identified. In addition, the study has identified and compared the delay causes in DB projects and DBB projects. Mitigation measures developed in this study will help professionals and project managers not just in India but other developing countries as well to alleviate delay causes and in improvement of project timelines.

Projects often face delays and unnecessary use of time due to various factors and reasons, and hence suffer from unfavourable consequences. The purpose of this paper is to identify the universal delay factors from an intensive literature review, complemented by delay factors in major Norwegian construction projects based on empirical data.

The study in which this paper is based includes an intensive literature review, and semi-quantitative open survey questionnaires. This paper addresses frequency and type of delay factors in construction projects, in Norway based on the survey, and worldwide based on the previous studies.

From the study, the causes of delays facing the Norwegian construction industry are: poor planning and scheduling; slow/poor decision-making process; internal administrative procedures and bureaucracy within project organisations; resources shortage (human resources, machinery, equipment); poor communication and coordination between parties; slow quality inspection process of the completed work; design changes during construction/change orders; sponsor/owner/client lack of commitment and/or clear demands (goals and objectives); late/slow/incomplete/improper design; office issues; and users’ issues. And the top 10 universal delay factors are: design changes during construction/change orders; delays in payment of contractor(s); poor planning and scheduling; poor site management and supervision; incomplete or improper design; inadequate contractor experience/building methods and approaches; contractor’s financial difficulties; sponsor/owner/client’s financial difficulties; resources shortage (human resources, machinery, equipment); and poor labour productivity and shortage of skills.

When it comes to the identification of delay factors in major Norwegian projects, the research is based on a sample of 202 respondents from an open survey questionnaire. It should be noted that analysing a large population of respondents that have been asked open questions can be challenging due to the vague findings it might lead to. Also, when it comes to the identification of the universal delay factors, there were different methods used by different authors, within different context. Similar future studies in Norway based on qualitative and quantitative methods will give better verification for the findings.

This paper has documented the critical delay factors/causes in Norway. The results of this study will help project managers, in Norway and elsewhere, to be aware and know about the potential causes of delay in their construction projects, which will help to identify the possible risks in the early phases of the project. Another practical implication is to make project managers and policy makers conscious that delays are quite universal, making it necessary to identify them as a first step.

The identification of delays factors and causes can permit projects to implement mitigation actions to avoid delays, thus allowing delivering schools, hospitals and other necessary infrastructure on schedule or ahead of schedule to society.

This paper highlights most (almost all) of the studies in the literature, including to the study done in Norway, concerning the delay factors in construction projects and large construction projects in general. This wide review of relevant literature will save time other academicians from having to conduct similar studies. This study will assist both academic and professional experts providing more insight about the delay causes in large-scale construction projects.