Causes and effects of delays in Malaysian construction industry

This study identified 10 most important causes of delay from a list of 28 different causes and 6 different effects of delay. Ten most important causes were: (1) contractor’s improper planning, (2) contractor’s poor site management, (3) inadequate contractor experience, (4) inadequate client’s finance and payments for completed work, (5) problems with subcontractors, (6) shortage in material, (7) labor supply, (8) equipment availability and failure, (9) lack of communication between parties, and (10) mistakes during the construction stage. Six main effects of delay were: (1) time overrun, (2) cost overrun, (3) disputes, (4) arbitration, (5) litigation, and (6) total abandonment.

Causes and effects of delays in Malaysian construction industry

Graduate School of Management, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM, Serdang Selangor, Malaysia Received 21 April 2006; received in revised form 27 June 2006; accepted 21 November 2006

Abstract

The problem of delays in the construction industry is a global phenomenon and the construction industry in Malaysia is no exception The main purpose of this study is to identify the delay factors and their impact (effect) on project completion Earlier studies either con-sidered the causes or the effects of project delays, separately This study takes an integrated approach and attempts to analyze the impact

of specific causes on specific effects A questionnaire survey was conducted to solicit the causes and effects of delay from clients, consul-tants, and contractors About 150 respondents participated in the survey This study identified 10 most important causes of delay from a list of 28 different causes and 6 different effects of delay Ten most important causes were: (1) contractor’s improper planning, (2) con-tractor’s poor site management, (3) inadequate contractor experience, (4) inadequate client’s finance and payments for completed work, (5) problems with subcontractors, (6) shortage in material, (7) labor supply, (8) equipment availability and failure, (9) lack of commu-nication between parties, and (10) mistakes during the construction stage Six main effects of delay were: (1) time overrun, (2) cost over-run, (3) disputes, (4) arbitration, (5) litigation, and (6) total abandonment This study has also established an empirical relationship between each cause and effect

Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd and IPMA All rights reserved

Keywords: Delay causes; Delay effects; Construction industry; Malaysia; Correlational analysis

1 Introduction

The problem of delays in the construction industry is a

global phenomenon In Saudi Arabia, Assaf and Al-Hejji

[6]found that only 30% of construction projects were

com-pleted within the scheduled completion dates and that the

average time overrun was between 10% and 30% In

Nige-ria, Ajanlekoko [2] observed that the performance of the

construction industry in terms of time was poor Odeyinka

and Yusif[16]have shown that seven out of ten projects

sur-veyed in Nigeria suffered delays in their execution

Ogunl-ana and Promkuntong [17] conducted a study on

construction delays in Thailand Al-Momani [5] carried

out a quantitative analysis on construction delays in

Jor-dan Frimpong et al [10] conducted a survey to identify

and evaluate the relative importance of the significant

fac-tors contributing to delay and cost overruns in Ghana groundwater construction projects Chan and Kumarasw-amy[8]studied delays in Hong Kong construction industry They emphasized that timely delivery of projects within budget and to the level of quality standard specified by the client is an index of successful project delivery Failure

to achieve targeted time, budgeted cost and specified quality result in various unexpected negative effects on the projects Normally, when the projects are delayed, they are either extended or accelerated and therefore, incur additional cost The normal practices usually allow a percentage of the pro-ject cost as a contingency allowance in the contract price and this allowance is usually based on judgment [3] Although the contract parties agreed upon the extra time and cost associated with delay, in many cases there were problems between the owner and contractor as to whether the contractor was entitled to claim the extra cost Such sit-uations, usually involved questioning the facts, causal fac-tors and contract interpretation [4] Therefore, delays in

0263-7863/$30.00 Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd and IPMA All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.ijproman.2006.11.007

*

Corresponding author Tel.: +60 389467698; fax: +60 389434019.

E-mail address: murali@econ.upm.edu.my (M Sambasivan).

www.elsevier.com/locate/ijproman International Journal of Project Management 25 (2007) 517–526

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

construction projects give rise to dissatisfaction to all the

parties involved and the main role of the project manager

is to make sure that the projects are completed within the

budgeted time and cost The construction sector in

Malay-sia, a fast developing country in South-East Asia has not

escaped the problem of delays In 2005, about 17.3% (of

417 government contract projects in Malaysia) were

consid-ered sick (more than 3 months of delay or abandoned)

The Construction Sector is one of the important sectors

that contribute to Malaysia’s economic growth The sector

accounted for nearly 3.3% of GDP in the year 2005 and

employed about 600,000 workers including 109,000 foreign

workers (MALBEX[12]) The huge volume and complexity

of projects in Malaysia’s construction sector pose a great

challenge and provide a wealth of opportunities to various

companies in the construction industry The construction

sector in Malaysia can be divided into four broad

catego-ries: office, retail, residential and infrastructure This sector

suffered a temporary crisis between 1997 and 2000 (ASEAN

crisis) and now it has started to improve However, the

delays in the projects continue to occur The main purpose

of this study is to identify the delay factors and their impact

(effect) on project completion Earlier studies either

consid-ered the causes or the effects of project delays, separately

This study takes an integrated approach and attempts to

analyze the impact of specific causes on specific effects

Some causes and effects of delays in construction projects

can be country-specific The logical question at this point

is: Why is it necessary to link the causes and effects of delays

and how can the link help the practitioners to prevent or

remedy future delays? In this research, we identified major

causes of delay and categorized them as client-related,

con-tractor-related, consultant-related, material-related,

labor-related, contract-related, contract relationship-related,

and external factors We have also identified major effects

of delay as: time overrun, cost overrun, dispute, arbitration,

litigation, and total abandonment Identification of causes

and effects alone does not help the project managers to take

appropriate remedial or preventive steps The project

man-agers need to understand, for example, what causes or

fac-tors result in time overrun or cost overrun Once these

factors become clear, the managers can take proactive steps

to avoid such situations For example, if it is known that

time overruns are predominantly caused by client-related

factors, the project manager can: (1) make sure that

pay-ments for the completed work are paid on time, (2) reduce

owner interference, (3) speed up the decision-making

pro-cess, and (4) avoid unrealistic contract duration and

requirements Therefore, the link between causes and effects

of delays need to be established

This paper is organized as follows Section2 deals with

the previous studies on causes and effects of delays in

pro-jects Section3 explains the methodology of research

Sec-tion 4 discusses the analysis the data using statistical

procedures Section 5 discusses the results Section 6

pre-sents the strategies for reducing delays in construction

pro-jects and Section7presents the conclusions

2 Previous studies Many researchers have studied the causes and few researchers have studied the effects of project delays in the construction industry We have broken the studies into two parts: (1) Studies on causes of delay and (2) Studies on effects of delay

2.1 Studies on causes of delay Mansfield [14] identified 16 major factors that caused delays and cost overruns in Nigeria A questionnaire sur-vey was carried out with contractors, consultants and client organizations in Nigeria They presented that the causes of delay and cost overruns in Nigerian construction projects were attributed to finance and payment arrangements, poor contract management, shortages in materials, inaccu-rate estimation, and overall price fluctuations

Assaf et al [7] identified 56 main causes of delay in Saudi large building construction projects and their relative importance Based on the contractors surveyed the most important delay factors were: preparation and approval

of shop drawings, delays in contractor’s progress, payment

by owners and design changes From the view of the archi-tects and engineers the cash problems during construction, the relationship between subcontractors and the slow deci-sion making process of the owner were the main causes of delay However, the owners agreed that the design errors, labor shortages and inadequate labor skills were important delay factors

Ogunlana and Promkuntong[17]conducted a study on construction delays in Thailand They found that the prob-lems faced by the construction industry in developing econ-omies like Thailand could be: (a) shortages or inadequacies

in industry infrastructure (mainly supply of resources); (b) caused by clients and consultants and (c) caused by con-tractor’s incompetence/inadequacies They recommended that there should be concerted effort by economy managers and construction industry associations to provide the nec-essary infrastructure for efficient project management Chan and Kumaraswamy [8] conducted a survey to determine and evaluate the relative importance of the sig-nificant factors causing delays in Hong Kong construction projects They analyzed and ranked main reasons for delays and classified them into two groups: (a) the role of the parties in the local construction industry (i.e whether client, consultants or contractors) and (b) the type of pro-jects Results indicated that five major causes of delays were: poor site management and supervision, unforeseen ground conditions, low speed of decision making involving all project teams, client initiated variations and necessary variations of works

Odeyinka and Yusif [16] have addressed the causes of delays in building projects in Nigeria They classified the causes of delay as project participants and extraneous factors Client-related delays included variation in orders, slow decision-making and cash flow problems

Contrac-tor-related delays identified were: financial difficulties,

material management problems, planning and scheduling

problems, inadequate site inspection, equipment

manage-ment problems and shortage of manpower Extraneous

causes of delay identified were: inclement weather, acts of

nature, labor disputes and strikes

Al-Momani [5] carried out a quantitative analysis on

construction delays in Jordan The result of his study

indi-cated that the main causes of delay in construction of

pub-lic projects were related to designers, user changes,

weather, site conditions, late deliveries, economic

condi-tions and increase in quantity Similarly, Odeh and

Battai-neh [15]also conducted a survey aimed at identifying the

most important causes of delays in construction projects

with traditional type of contracts from the viewpoint of

construction contractors and consultants Results of the

survey indicated that contractors and consultants agreed

that owner interference, inadequate contractor experience,

financing and payments, labor productivity, slow decision

making, improper planning, and subcontractors were

among the top ten most important factors

Frimpong et al.,[10]conducted a survey to identify and

evaluate the relative importance of significant factors

con-tributing to delay and cost overruns in Ghana groundwater

construction projects A questionnaire with 26 factors was

carefully designed from preliminary investigations

con-ducted in groundwater drilling projects between 1970 and

1999 in Ghana The questionnaire was directed towards

three groups in both public and private organizations:

owners of the groundwater projects, consulting offices,

and contractors working in the groundwater works The

questionnaire was distributed to a random sample of 55

owners, 40 contractors and 30 consultants The result of

the study revealed the main causes of delay and cost

over-runs in construction of groundwater projects: monthly

payment difficulties from agencies; poor contractor

man-agement; material procurement; poor technical

perfor-mance; and escalation of material prices

Assaf and Al-Hejji[6]conducted a survey on time

per-formance of large construction projects in Saudi Arabia

The survey had 73 different causes of delay He studied

the importance of various causes from the viewpoint of

contractors, consultants, and owners The most common

cause of delay identified by all the parties was ‘‘change

order’’ He also found that about 70% of the projects

expe-rienced time overruns

2.2 Studies on effects of delay

Aibinu and Jagboro[1]studied and evaluated the effects

of construction delays on project delivery in Nigerian

struction industry They found that the six effects of

con-struction delay were: time overrun, cost overrun, dispute,

arbitration and litigation and total abandonment The

questionnaires were sent to three groups of construction

practitioners: quantity surveyors, architects and engineers,

and contractors

Manavazhia and Adhikarib [13]conducted a survey to investigate material and equipment procurement delays in highway projects in Nepal Delay in the delivery of materi-als and equipment to construction sites is often a contribu-tory cause to cost overruns in construction projects in developing countries An assessment of the causes of the delays and the magnitude of their impact on project costs were also made The survey method was used in conducting this research involving 22 highway projects The main causes of material and equipment procurement delays were found to be (in rank order) organizational weaknesses, sup-pliers’ defaults, governmental regulations and transporta-tion delays However, the actual impact of these delays

on project costs was found to be on average, only about 0.5% of the total budgeted cost of the projects Among materials, delays in the supply of aggregates and equipment were found to occur most frequently

Chan and Kumaraswamy[9]explored strategies of com-pressing construction durations of various types of build-ing projects on the basis of the lessons learned from Hong Kong based surveys and other research findings The literature from different countries on the factors affect-ing construction durations, reasons for project delays and existing statistical models for duration forecasts were reviewed A regression-based model developed from Hong Kong public housing construction project data was used for predicting the durations of the primary work packages

in the building process and the overall completion period And finally, a survey was conducted by the researchers to explore the construction time performance of projects in three building sub-sectors (i.e public housing, public non-residential and private sector) Based on the factors identified as significant from the above research, specific technological and managerial strategies for reducing con-struction periods in particular building sub-sectors were formulated in order to improve the construction time per-formance of Hong Kong building projects

Terry Williams [19] studied the standard methods cur-rently available for assessing extension of time delays on major projects, and issues around such assessment He used network causal mapping and system dynamics approach to study the impact of delays on a project

Based on the above studies, it can be inferred that the earlier studies concentrated on either the causes or the effects However, some studies have alluded to the probable link between the causes and effects of delays without a sys-tematic analysis Manavizha and Adhikarib[13]linked the material-related causes to the probable cost overruns in construction projects in Nepal Assaf and Al-Hejji[6]linked the contractor-related and labor-related causes to the prob-able time overruns in construction projects in Saudi Arabia Odeh and Battaineh[15]linked the contract-linked causes

to the probable disputes occurring in construction projects

in Jordan Chan and Kumaraswamy[8]linked the consul-tant-related and client-related causes to the probable time overruns in construction projects in Hong Kong Mansfield

et al.[14]and Frimpong et al.[10]linked the client-related,

consultant-related, and material-related factors to the

prob-able cost and time overruns In this research, we take an

integrated approach and attempt to link the causes and

the effects of delays in Malaysian construction industry

through a systematic analysis

3 Methodology

A questionnaire was developed to assess the perceptions

of clients, consultants, and contractors on the relative

importance of causes and effects of delay in Malaysian

con-struction industry The questionnaire was divided into

three parts The first part requested background

informa-tion about the respondents

The second part of the questionnaire focused on causes

of construction delay The respondents were asked to

indi-cate their response indi-category on 28 well-recognized

con-struction delay factors identified by Odeh and Battaineh

[15] These causes were categorized into the following eight

major groups:

1 Client related factors: finance and payments of

com-pleted work, owner interference, slow decision making

and unrealistic contract duration imposed by owners

2 Contractor related factors: delays caused by

subcontrac-tor, site management, improper construction methods,

improper planning and errors during construction, and

inadequate contractor experience

3 Consultant related factors: contract management,

prep-aration and approval of drawings, quality assurance and

waiting time for approval of test and inspection

4 Material related factors: quality of material and

short-age in material

5 Labor and equipment related factors: labor supply,

labor productivity and equipment availability and

failure

6 Contract related factors: change orders and mistakes or

discrepancies in contract document

7 Contract relationship related factors: major disputes

and negotiations, inappropriate overall organizational

structure linking to the project and lack of

communica-tion between the parties

8 External factors: weather condition, regulatory changes,

problem with neighbors and unforeseen site condition

The respondents were asked to highlight their

recom-mendations to improve the performance of Malaysian

con-struction industry through an open-ended question at the

end of second part of the questionnaire

Third part of the questionnaire focused on the effects of

construction delay in Malaysian construction industry The

six effects of construction delay identified were: time

over-run, cost overover-run, dispute, arbitration, litigation, and total

abandonment [1] Similar to the second part of the

ques-tionnaire, the respondents were asked to highlight their

rec-ommendation to minimize the effects of construction delays

through an open-ended question A five-point Likert scale

ranging from 1 (not important) to 5 (extremely important) was adopted to capture the importance of causes and effects of delays

Before distributing the questionnaire, a small pilot study was conducted using 10 consultants, 10 clients, and 10 con-tractors The basic purpose of the pilot study was to verify the completeness of the questionnaire in capturing the fac-tors relevant for Malaysia All the respondents agreed that the questionnaire was sufficient to capture the causes and effects of delays Therefore, we did not make any modifica-tion to the causes of delay identified by Odeh and Battai-neh [15] and effects of delay identified by Aibinu and Jagboro[1]

The sampling method used in this study was conve-nience and snowball sampling This sampling comes under the class of non-probability sampling techniques As the name implies, sample elements are identified by conve-nience (friends) and through referral networks This method of sampling is preferred when it is difficult to get response from sample elements selected at random [18]

We distributed the questionnaires through our friends working in Public Works Department of Malaysia, devel-opers, consultants and construction firms Our friends in turn distributed to their friends This sampling method enabled us to obtain a large number of completed question-naires quickly and economically Two hundred sets of questionnaires were distributed to the potential respon-dents at all levels in the organizations within the construc-tion industry One hundred sets were distributed to clients (50 sets to Public Works Department of Malaysia and 50 sets to private developers), 50 sets to consultants and 50 sets to the contractors Of the 200 questionnaires, 150 sets (75%) were returned and there were 67 sets (67%) from cli-ents, 48 sets (96%) from consultants and 35 sets (70%) from contractors

3.1 Calculation of relative importance of factors Kometa et al [11] used the relative importance index method to determine the relative importance of the various causes and effects of delays The same method was adopted

in this study within various groups (i.e clients, consultants

or contractors) The five-point scale ranged from 1 (not important) to 5 (extremely important) was adopted and transformed to relative importance indices (RII) for each factor as follows:

RII¼

PW

where W is the weighting given to each factor by the respondents (ranging from 1 to 5), A is the highest weight (i.e 5 in this case), and N is the total number of respon-dents The RII value had a range from 0 to 1 (0 not inclu-sive), higher the value of RII, more important was the cause or effect of delays

The RII was used to rank (R) the different causes These rankings made it possible to cross-compare the relative

importance of the factors as perceived by the three groups

of respondents (i.e clients, consultants and contractors)

Each individual cause’s RII perceived by all respondents

were used to assess the general and overall rankings in

order to give an overall picture of the causes of

construc-tion delays in Malaysian construcconstruc-tion industry The same

procedure was adopted for ranking the effects The indices

(RII) were then used to determine the rank of each item

(effect) These rankings made it possible to cross compare

the relative importance of the items as perceived by the

three groups of respondents The weighted average for each

item for the three groups of respondents was determined

and ranks (R) were assigned to each item representing the

perception of the three groups

4 Analysis of data

The demographic characteristics of the respondents are

given inTable 1

4.1 Causes of delay

The primary data collected from the second part of the

questionnaire was analyzed from the perspective of clients,

consultants and contractors Each individual cause’s RII

perceived by all respondents was computed for overall

analysis

The relative importance index, RII, was computed for

each cause to identify the most significant causes The

causes were ranked based on RII values From the ranking

assigned to each cause of delays, we were able to identify

the most important factors or causes of delays in

Malay-sian construction industry

Based on the ranking, the five most important causes of

construction delays as perceived by clients were: (1)

con-tractor’s improper planning (RII = 0.821); (2) concon-tractor’s

site management (RII = 0.779); (3) inadequate contractor

experience (RII = 0.770); (4) labor supply problems (RII

= 0.770) and (5) subcontractor problems (RII = 0.758)

The five most important causes of construction delays as

perceived by consultants were: (1) contractor’s improper

planning (RII = 0.842); (2) contractor’s site management

(RII = 0.821); (3) shortage in material (RII = 0.804); (4)

inadequate contractor experience (RII = 0.770), and (5)

inadequate client’s finance and payments of completed

work (RII = 0.792) The five most important causes of

struction delays as perceived by contractor were: (1)

con-tractor’s poor site management (RII = 0.869); (2)

inadequate client’s finance and payments of completed

work (RII = 0.823); (3) subcontractors (RII = 0.789); (4)

inadequate contractor experience (RII = 0.783), and (5)

equipment availability and failures (RII = 0.777) From

the above list, it is interesting to compare the causes as

per-ceived by clients and contractors Most of the disputes that

arise in the construction industry in Malaysia are between

clients and contractors, most often, one party blaming the

other Three of the causes perceived common between

clients and contractors are: contractor’s site management, inadequate contractor experience, and subcontractors The clients blame contractor’s improper planning and labor supply as other important causes of delay The con-tractors’ inability to plan can be attributed to contractor’s inexperience A significant portion of the labor force in the construction industry is from neighboring countries like Indonesia It is quite difficult to prevent the movement of these laborers from one construction company to another causing disruption of work The contractors blame client’s inability to pay for the completed work and equipment availability and failures as other important causes of delay These causes can be attributed to the client’s financial posi-tion and contractor’s improper planning In government related projects, payments to the contractors take relatively longer time It is the responsibility of the contractors to fac-tor in this time during the planning process Table 2gives

Table 1 Demographic characteristics of respondents Demographic characteristic Frequency Percent Age

Sex

Education

Type of organization Clients (government or developer) 67 44.7

Occupational level

Number of years working experience

Fields of specializations

Largest project involved based on contract sum

the ranking of causes based on response of all respondents

(clients, contractors and consultants).Table 3summarizes

RII and ranking of the categories of causes of delay as

per-ceived by all respondents

In order to test the degree of agreement between the

three groups of respondents as to the causes of delays, a

correlation analysis using Spearmen’s rank correlation

coefficient was done [6] Table 4 gives the results of the

analysis High correlation indicates that there is a high

degree of agreement between the respondents

4.2 Effects of delay

The primary data collected from the third part of the

questionnaire was analyzed from the perspective of

cli-ents, consultants and contractors The calculation of RII

and ranking were done as explained in the previous

section

Based on the ranking, the important effects of construc-tion delays as perceived by clients were: time overrun (RII = 0.821), cost overrun (RII = 0.782), dispute (RII = 0.687), arbitration (RII = 0.621), litigation (RII = 0.591), and total abandonment (RII = 0.585) The important effects of construction delays as perceived by contractors and consultants were exactly the same as those

of clients and therefore, a separate analysis using Spear-men’s Rank correlation was not done to test the agreement between the three groups of respondents.Table 5gives the ranking of effects based on response of all respondents (cli-ents, contractors and consultants)

The next step in the analysis was to identify the empiri-cal relationships between the causes and the effects Empir-ical relationships are based on observations and propositions that are based on sense experience and are derived from methods of inductive logic, including mathe-matics and statistics[18] In short, empirical relationships

Table 2

Ranking of causes (based on overall)

Client related causes

Unrealistic contract duration and requirements imposed 5.3 10.7 42.0 32.0 10.0 0.661 24 Contractor related causes

Consultant related causes

Waiting time for approval of tests and inspection 1.3 14.0 44.0 30.0 10.7 0.669 23 Material related causes

Labor and equipment category causes

Contract related causes

Contract relationships related causes

Inappropriate overall organizational structure linking to the project 0.0 14.7 48.0 29.3 8.0 0.661 25

External causes

attempt to describe, explain, and make predictions through

observation In this research, we attempt to establish

rela-tionship between causes and effects through observable

data Since the data we have collected through survey is

based on Likert-scale, it can be considered as interval data

Correlation analysis is a powerful method to study the rela-tionship between variables that have interval data [18] Therefore, a correlation analysis was done to study the empirical relationships between the categories of causes and effects.Table 6gives the results of the analysis

Table 3

RII and ranking of categories of causes of delay

Table 4

Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients of the ranking of clients, consultants and contractors for causes of delay (28 causes)

a Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level of significance – if significance probability is lesser than the level of significance, correlation is significant.

Table 5

Ranking of effects (based on overall)

Table 6

Correlation between the categories of causes and effects of delays

Client Contractor Consultant Material Labor Contract related Contract relationship External

Highlighted coefficients are significant at 0.05 significance level.

5 Discussion of results

This section discusses the results obtained in the earlier

section First, we discuss the results obtained by analyzing

the causes of delays Second, we discuss the results

obtained by analyzing the effects of the delays Third, we

link each of the effect with the causes of delay

The ten most important causes of delays (based on all

respondents) as shown in theTable 2were: (1) contractor’s

improper planning (RII = 0.815), (2) contractor’s poor site

management (RII = 0.813), (3) inadequate contractor

experience (RII = 0.783), (4) inadequate client’s finance

and payments for completed work (RII = 0.792), (5)

prob-lems with subcontractors (RII = 0.771), (6) shortage in

material (RII = 0.771), (7) labor supply (RII = 0.757), (8)

equipment availability and failure (RII = 0.755), (9) lack

of communication between parties (RII = 0.755), and

(10) mistakes during the construction stage (RII = 0.753)

5.1 Contractor’s improper planning

Local contractors often fail to come out with a practical

and workable ‘‘work program’’ at the initial planning

stage This failure is interrelated with lack of systematic site

management and inadequate contractor’s experience

towards the projects The consultant only checks and

reviews the work program submitted by the contractors

based on experience and intuitive judgment Improper

planning at the initial stages of a project manifests

through-out the project and causes delays at various stages Only a

project that is well planned can be well executed

5.2 Contractor’s poor site management

Contractor’s poor site management is one of the most

significant causes in causing the construction delays The

results of this research indicate that local contractors face

deficiency in site planning, implementation and controls

A poor site management results in delays in responding

to the issues that arise at the site and causes negative

impact on the overall work progress

5.3 Inadequate contractor experience

Odeh and Battaineh[15]indicated that inadequate

con-tractor experience was an important factor and this could

be linked to the contract awarding procedure where most

projects were awarded to the lowest bidder A contractor

with inadequate experience cannot plan and manage the

projects properly and this can lead to disastrous

consequences

5.4 Client’s finance and payments for completed work

Construction works involve huge amounts of money

and most of the contractors find it very difficult to bear

the heavy daily construction expenses when the payments

are delayed Work progress can be delayed due to the late payments from the clients because there is inadequate cash flow to support construction expenses especially for those contractors who are not financially sound

5.5 Problems with subcontractors Typically in huge projects, there are many subcontrac-tors working under main contracsubcontrac-tors If the subcontractor

is capable, the project can be completed on time as planned The project can be delayed if the subcontractor under performs because of inadequate experience or capa-bility High degree of subcontracting in Malaysia leads to high risk of delays and this leads to inefficiencies in the Malaysian construction industry

5.6 Shortage in material Shortages in basic materials like sand, cement, stones, bricks, and iron can cause major delays in projects Since Malaysia is a country that is developing very fast, often times demand exceeds the supply and this causes prices

to increase The contractors postpone the purchase activi-ties until the prices decrease Manavazhia and Adhikarib

[13] investigated material and equipment procurement delays in highway projects in Nepal and found these delays

to cause cost overrun

5.7 Labor supply The quality and quantity of labor supply can have major impact on the projects About 20% of the workers in the Malaysian construction industry are foreign workers, mainly from Indonesia and Vietnam (MALBEX [12]) A few of them are illegal workers and their work quality is relatively low when compared to local laborers The low quality and productivity of the foreign workers have impact on the project progress and efficiency The illegal workers are frequently caught by the Malaysian immigrant officials and deported and this causes shortage of labor pool in the construction industry

5.8 Equipment availability and failure Many of the contractors do not own equipments that are required for the construction work They rent the equipments when required During the season when there are many construction projects, the equipments are in short supply and are poorly maintained This leads to failure of the equipments causing the progress to be hampered 5.9 Lack of communication between parties

Since there are many parties involved in a project (client, consultant, contractor, sub-contractors), the communica-tion between the parties is very crucial for the success of the project Proper communication channels between the

various parties must be established during the planning

stage Any problem with communication can lead to severe

misunderstanding and therefore, delays in the execution of

the project

5.10 Mistakes during the construction stage

The mistakes during the construction stage can be due

to accidents, inadequate planning, or miscommunication

between the parties Whatever the reason, the mistakes

can have impact on the progress of the project

While analyzing the effects of delays, all respondents

were unanimous in ranking the effects The time and cost

overruns were ranked highly by the respondents Any delay

in a project can lead to cost and time overruns and these

two are linked Whenever there are delays, there are

dis-putes as to who should bear the responsibility and the cost

These disputes often lead to an arbitration process by third

parties and failure in this process leads to litigation where

the disputes are settled by the court In extreme cases, some

projects might be totally abandoned About 17% of the

projects in Malaysia are abandoned (MALBEX[12])

In the following paragraphs, we analyze the impact of

causes on each effect of delay Correlation analysis results

given in Table 6 establish the link between them From

the table, we can identify the causes for each of the effects

of delay

5.11 Time overrun

Client-related and contractor-related factors have

impact on the time overrun Out of the ten most important

causes of delay discussed earlier, six causes belong to

client-related and contractor-client-related factors Factors such as

inadequate planning by the contractors, improper site

management by the contractors, inadequate project

han-dling experience of contractors, and delay in the payments

for the work completed directly affect the completion of the

project and cause time overrun

5.12 Cost overrun

Contract-related factors such as change orders (changes

in the deliverables and requirements) and mistakes and

dis-crepancies in the contract document result in cost overrun

Mistakes and discrepancies in the contract document can

be in scope, deliverables, resources available and allocated,

payment terms, achievement of various milestones, and the

project duration In most of the instances, time overrun

leads to cost overrun Correlation analysis between cost

and time overruns indicated a strong linkage (correlation

coefficient = 0.487, significant at 0.01 level of significance)

5.13 Disputes

Client-related, contract-related, contract

relationship-related, and external factors have impact on the disputes

that arise during the course of the project Factors such

as delay in the payments for completed work, frequent owner interference, changing requirements, lack of com-munication between the various parties, problems with neighbors, and unforeseen site conditions give rise to dis-putes between the various parties The disdis-putes, if not resolved amicably, can lead to arbitration or litigation 5.14 Arbitration

Client-related and contract relationship-related factors escalate disputes to be settled by arbitration process A competent third-party can settle the disputes amicably without going to the court

5.15 Litigation Client-related, labor-related, contract-related, contract relationship-related, and external factors escalate disputes

to be settled by the litigation process The parties involved

in the projects use litigation as a last resort to settle disputes

5.16 Total abandonment Client-related, consultant-related, labor-related, con-tract-related, and external factors contribute to the total abandonment of the projects In Malaysia, many projects were temporarily abandoned during the financial crisis between 1997 and 2000 Promoters of various projects backed out because of poor cash flow and economic condi-tions Many of these projects have now become so prohib-itive that they have been abandoned permanently (MALBEX[12])

Based on the discussions above, the next step is to pro-vide suggestions to clients, contractors, and consultants to reduce delays These suggestions, we hope, will alleviate the problems faced by the construction industry in Malaysia

6 Prescriptions to reduce delays

We divide the prescriptions to adopted into three groups: (1) prescriptions for the clients, (2) prescriptions for the consultants, and (3) prescriptions for the contractors

6.1 Prescriptions for the clients (1) While selecting the contractors, clients have to make sure that the contractors are not selected based only on the lowest bid The selected contractor must have sufficient experience, technical capability, financial capability, and sufficient manpower to execute the project, (2) clients should not interfere frequently during the execution and keep making major changes to the requirements This can cause inordinate delays in the project, (3) clients should have the finances in time to pay the contractors after

com-pletion of a work Therefore, clients should work closely

with the financing bodies and institutions to release the

payment on schedule, and (4) clients must make quick

deci-sions to solve any problem that arise during the execution

6.2 Prescriptions for the consultants

(1) While drawing the contract between the client and

contractor, the consultant must include items such as

dura-tion of contract, mechanism to solve disputes, mechanism

to assess the causes of delay, if there are any and risk

man-agement plans, (2) consultants should prepare and approve

drawings on time, and (3) consultants should monitor the

work closely by making inspections at appropriate times

6.3 Prescriptions for the contractors

(1) Contractors should not take up the job in which they

do not have sufficient expertise, (2) contractors should have

able site-managers for the smooth execution of work, (3)

contractors must plan their work properly and provide

the entire schedule to the clients, and (4) contractors must

make sure they have a sound financial backing

7 Conclusions

We investigated the causes and effects of delays facing in

the Malaysian construction industry A questionnaire was

designed and distributed among the three major groups

of participants (clients, consultants and contractors) We

identified main causes of delay and ten most important

causes were: (1) contractor’s improper planning, (2)

con-tractor’s poor site management, (3) inadequate contractor

experience, (4) inadequate client’s finance and payments

for completed work, (5) problems with subcontractors,

(6) shortage in material, (7) labor supply, (8) equipment

availability and failure, (9) lack of communication between

parties, and (10) mistakes during the construction stage

We identified main effects of delay and they were: (1) time

overrun, (2) cost overrun, (3) disputes, (4) arbitration, (5)

litigation, and (6) total abandonment As an important

contribution, we also studied the empirical relationships

between the causes and effects of delays We isolated the

causes of delay for each of the six effects We believe that

the results of this study can be of immense help to the

prac-titioners (clients, contractors and consultants) and

acade-micians The practitioners can better understand the

dynamics of project management and make efforts to

reduce the incidences of delays The academicians can con-duct similar studies in other parts of world and identify causes and effects of delays As mentioned earlier, some causes and effects may be unique to certain countries References

[1] Aibinu AA, Jagboro GO The effects of construction delays on project delivery in Nigerian construction industry Int J Project Manage 2002;20:593–9.

[2] Ajanlekoko JO Controlling cost in the construction industry Lagos

QS Digest, Lagos 1987;1(1):8–12.

[3] Akinsola AO Neural network model for predicting building projects’ contingency In: Conference: proceedings of association of research-ers in construction management, ARCOM 96, Sheffield Hallam University, England, 11–13 September 1996 p 507–16.

[4] Alkass S, Mazerolle M, Harris F Construction delay analysis techniques Construction Manage Econ 1996;14(5):375–94.

[5] Al-Momani A Construction delay: a quantitative analysis Int J Project Manage 2000;20:51–9.

[6] Assaf SA, Al-Hejji S Causes of delay in large construction projects Int J Project Manage 2006;24(4):349–57.

[7] Assaf SA, Alkhalil M, Al-Hazmi M Causes of delay in large building construction projects J Manage Eng, ASCE 1995;11(2):45–50 [8] Chan DWM, Kumaraswamy MM A comparative study of causes of time overruns in Hong Kong construction projects Int J Project Manage 1997;15(1):55–63.

[9] Chan DWM, Kumaraswamy MM Compressing construction dura-tions: lessons learned from Hong Kong building projects Int J Project Manage 2002;20:23–35.

[10] Frimpong Y, Oluwoye J, Crawford L Causes of delay and cost overruns in construction of groundwater projects in a developing countries; Ghana as a case study Int J Project Manage 2003;21:321–6.

[11] Kometa ST, Olomolaiye PO, Harris FC Attributes of UK construc-tion clients influencing project consultants’ performance Construc-tion Manage Econ 1994;12:433–43.

[12] MALBEX, 2005 Market watch – construction industry, Kuala Lumpur Exhibition Center Report p 1–8.

[13] Manavazhia MR, Adhikarib DK Material and equipment procure-ment delays in highway projects in Nepal Int J Project Manage 2002;20:627–32.

[14] Mansfield NR Causes of delay and cost overruns in Nigerian construction projects Int J Project Manage 1994;12(4):254–60 [15] Odeh AM, Battaineh HT Causes of construction delay: traditional contracts Int J Project Manage 2002;20:67–73.

[16] Odeyinka HA, Yusif A The causes and effects of construction delays

on completion cost of housing project in Nigeria J Financial Manage Property Construction 1997;2(3):31–44.

[17] Ogunlana SO, Promkuntong K Construction delays in a fast growing economy: comparing Thailand with other economies Int J Project Manage 1996;14(1):37–45.

[18] Sekaran Uma Research methods for business: a skill building approach 3rd ed New York: John Wiley; 2000.

[19] Terry Williams Assessing extension of time delays on major projects Int J Project Manage 2003;21:19–26.