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CCC 2019
Proceedings of the Creative Construction Conference (2019) 047
Edited by: Miroslaw J. Skibniewski & Miklos Hajdu
[Link]

Creative Construction Conference 2019, CCC 2019, 29 June - 2 July 2019, Budapest, Hungary

Factors Influencing Construction Time Delay on High Rise Projects

In India
Saurav Dixita*, Kaaraayaarthi Sharmaa
a
RICS School of Built Environment, Amity University Noida, 201313, India

Abstract

In Construction Project delay can be defined as the time over-run from the agreed upon a time which can be written & signed in the
form of contract or verbal mutual agreement. Construction Projects often face delays and uses unnecessary time due to various
factors and reasons, and hence suffer from unfavourable consequences. This study will identify the significant delay factors from
an intensive literature review, supplemented by delay factors in major Indian construction projects based on empirical data. A total
of eight ongoing construction projects were selected for the study. And a questionnaire is also used to collect reasons for the delay,
their frequency, importance, and severity. 53 valid responses received from the project managers. SPSS 21 tool package is used for
statistical analysis and the tests performed were Severity index and the correlation between the attributes. The findings of the study
concluded that the maximum severity for delaying projects is due to Design Variation followed by Lack of Proper Planning, and
Shortages of Skilled Labour.

© 2019 The Authors. Published by Budapest University of Technology and Economics & Diamond Congress Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Creative Construction Conference 2019.

Keywords: Delay; Projects; Construction Management; India.

1. Introduction

Construction Industry is a huge industry which is the most important in creating jobs when it comes to India. However,
most of the times it has seen the downturn because of many internal as well as external reasons. Never the less the
most important of them is the time delay and cost overrun which hampers the project success immensely in a sense
that the project which was very viable to take in the preliminary stage is giving loses at the time of execution. In fact,
this is the most important reason why many of the projects are left incomplete and developers move on to the next
project [1]–[3]. However, with RERA act came into existence now the developers can’t just be left the project without
completing it and moving on to the next project, So this is very important to understand the effect as well as factors
affecting the Time delays & cost over-run. This thesis is done mainly for the Time delay factors which has identified
and ranked different factors. This result is specific to the Indian Country context however, this result will not be much
different for other developing countries as well when it comes to Time delay factors [4]–[6].
In most of the countries in the world, experience and the research has found out or revealed that all the successful
projects should be completed within the designated time frame for a project. Therefore, the causes of delays or time
overrun is an important aspect which should be studied in detail as it affects the profitability of the project. A lot of

*Corresponding author: Saurav Dixit

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researchers, in their research or papers, have been able to identify such factors that actually affect the delays in a
construction project and this affects the economy as well as organizations health. The time overrun in a construction
project is usually a cause link to scope, quality and cost for different tasks or work [2], [7]–[9]. No matter how much
we speak about the various studies or research been done in analyzing the various factors affecting the delays for
various construction projects in India and around the world, we still need to a deeper understanding on this matter to
improve it for achieving better results. Indian economy has very impactful manufacturing and another sector which
contribute largely to GDP. But construction is still an untouched area which only contributes approximately 5.5 %
(1990’s data) of overall GPD growth. However, the Indian Construction industry is now expected to be the backbone
of the Indian economy & currently, it contributes about 53 % to the GDP, according to the latest report published by
the government [10]–[12].

2. Literature Review

In the Construction industry, there are a lot of variables that derives the project and decide its fate in terms of how
successful it has met its intended purpose. The construction Industry is always expected to be a growing one especially
when we talk specifically with reference to developing countries [13], [14]. In India there are lot many development
projects of more than 100 crores are being carried out different states of the country and thus requires huge funds which
is a very scarce resource and is important if the country wants to be among the developed ones from the developing
ones, this transfer of status is not easy and requires a lot much constructions to be carried out in the next span of 10
years or so. In order to do such type of construction, India needs to plan thoroughly so that there are no much wastages
of resources and the projects meet its the purpose. All the construction work needs to be planned in terms of how the
work will be executed, who is responsible for that particular work, outlining the scope and requirements, major
deliverables, no. of tenders to be floated for a particular project, no. of parties involved in a project (Kim, 1982).
A project can be defined as an endeavour which is temporary in nature and has a definite timeline to follow. It uses
resources such as man, materials, plants and equipment’s to be able to complete its intended purpose or scope. One
thing we all should keep in mind being a constructional professional is that no matter how best we plan our course of
action, it will have some lapses and we all know about Parkinson’s Law is if anything that can go wrong in a project
then it will eventually so we planned according to it also. For a project to be successful, a project must be completed
within the requirement and limits of Scope, Quality, and Time & Cost. Thus, one should especially take care about
this 4 things in a project and this is what most researchers research about in order to find a standard solution but has
been said that each project is unique and thus all things are dynamic in nature and require updating with each new
project [15]–[18].

Table 1

[Link] Reference Number Attributes

1) [19], [20], Inaccurate Material Estimate

2) [5], [21], [22] Unexpected Weather Condition

3) [9], [23], [15], [24], [25] Shortage of Materials

4) Shortage of Equipment.

5) [21][14] Shortage of Skilled Labour.

6) [26], [26], [27] Inaccurate Productivity Rate calculation

7) [8] , [27]–[29] Location Constraint of Project.

8) [30] Lack of Proper Planning

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9) [3], [31], [32] Poor Productivity of Labour

10) [21], [22] Design Variation

11) [34]–[36] Inaccurate Productivity estimation of Equipment

I. Supernova (Sec 125, Noida):- The Project is delayed by about 34 months from its initial schedule baseline.
The residential building has more than 5o floors.
II. Panchsheel (Sec 75, Noida):- This Project has 22 floors and is been delayed by 19 months and is expected to
have more delay.
III. Xerbia Greens (Hinjewadi, Pune):- The Project has 18 floors and is been delayed for 16 months and is currently
under construction.
IV. Xerbia MarketYard (Hinjewadi, Pune):- This has 15 floors and the project mainly consist of studio apartments
and is being delayed by 16 months from the schedule.
V. The other projects which were studied in this research are Rohan Albania, Pebbles Urbania, Parande Pune
Ville, Jewel of India, and Wave City.
The common elements among all the projects discussed above have been delayed by more than 15 months and are
large because of the factors being characterized as the factors influencing Construction delays.

3. Research Methodology

On referring to the past records and trends on Construction Productivity in all the major developing countries, we were
able to shortlist some of the factors which were the primary causes in delays of the project (Assaf S. A.-K.-H., 1995).
We have selected this 12 factors and conducted the survey in the form of questionnaire which was distributed to most
of the high rise residential projects who were already in delays more than 6 months & located in Noida & Pune where
the Project In-charge or Project Manager was asked to fill up his responses (Peter F. Kaming, 2010). The Questionnaire
mainly asked them to rank these 10 factors according to them in terms of priority and what according to them has most
significantly delayed the projects. All the project managers were asked to rank all the factors from 1 to 5 with 5 being
the most important factor & 1 being the lowest importance in terms of delay.

3.1. Data collection

The questionnaire floated to about 53 Project Managers who are currently working or has done high rise residential
Projects in India. This sample does represent the whole population as it is been already discussed in one of the papers
(Kim, 1982). Several of the papers have used this same methodology for their research (Assaf S. A.-K.-H., 1995) (Peter
F. Kaming, 2010). Most of them answered over a phone call or through meeting and few handfuls of people have filled
in the form floated, Some of them has agreed to reveal their identity in the research paper but the majority of them has
asked to be confidential as it has lots of secret information regarding the schedule and budget of the project. One of
the Project managers was Nimesh Patel Sir who is working on a project of high rise residential building in Pune as
Project Manager from consultant side and name of the organization is GLEEDS INDIA & Similarly, Thirty-two (32)
managers mainly construction manager working on a high rise residential projects in India were asked to give response
against a set of questions in the form of questionnaire.

Table 2

[Link]. Variables of Delays Frequency Importance Severity

Rank Index Rank Index Rank Index

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1. Inaccurate Material Estimate 2 0.76 5 0.62 4 0.48

2. Unexpected Weather Condition 10 0.45 9 0.52 10 0.23

3. Shortage of Materials 7 0.52 6 0.61 7 0.32

4. Shortage of Equipment’s 6 0.58 10 0.5 9 0.29

5. Shortage of Skilled Labour 4 0.61 3 0.8 3 0.49

6. Inaccurate Productivity Rate calculation 8 0.49 4 0.7 6 0.34

7. Location Constraint of Project 10 0.24 11 0.4 11 0.1

8. Lack of Proper Planning. 3 0.62 2 0.82 2 0.51

9. Poor Productivity of Labour 5 0.59 7 0.6 5 0.36

10. Design Variation 1 0.9 1 1.0 1 0.9

11. Inaccurate Productivity estimation of Equipment 9 0.50 8 0.59 8 0.30

4. Result and Discussion

Table 3, shows the various factors according to importance index & frequency index and from which the severity index
is calculated and noted down. Severity index of various factors is the product of Importance index and Frequency Index
of individual factors. According to the values the 1st rank of the severity index among the factors was Design Variation
& subsequent ranks were 2nd (Lack of Proper Planning), 3rd (Shortages of Skilled Labour), 4th (Inaccurate material
estimate), and 5th (Poor Productivity of Labour), A correlation matrix of all the factors have been developed and
accordingly the interdependency among them is known like Inaccurate Material Estimate & Unexpected Weather
Conditions have 0.59 correlation value which we all know shows a direct relationship with each other & similarly with
Design Variation and location of project constraint has value of -0.478 and thus have a strong relationship between
them. It is been then founded or calculated for all the 11 factors from the Correlation matrix which is shown in Table
4. The above results have suggested that one of the key factors in the delays of the project is Design variation or we
can say Scope change from the client side. This type of delay is accompanied by several other delays from the other
remaining factors as shown with the correlation between all the factors.

5. Conclusion

Reviewing all the projects and project managers who were part of the survey, it has been observed that time overrun
is very common for most of the projects and in some cases are accompanied by cost overrun in the majority of the
high rise residential construction projects in Noida & Pune. The important factors governing the time over-run or
delays are Design variation or scope change, lack of proper planning, shortage of resources & inaccurate
Productivity calculation. While the data which were used for this findings are specific to the Indian context, the
results generally agree with the findings of the earlier findings of developing countries & thus, its fairly easy to say
that on and all this are the major reason for a project to be delayed across the developing countries.

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Table 3

Inaccu Unexp Short Shortag Short Inaccu Locati Lack Poor Desig Inaccu
rate ected age of e of age rate on of Produc n rate
Materi Weath Mater Equipm of Produc Const Prop tivity of Varia Produc
al er ials ent’s Skille tivity raint er Labour tion tivity
Estim Condit d Rate of Plan estimat
ate ion Labo calcula Projec ning ion of
ur tion t Equip
ment

Inaccurate Material Estimate 1

Unexpected Weather 0.591 1

Condition

Shortage of Materials -0.091 -0.435 1

Shortage of Equipment’s 0.144 -0.504 0.322 1

Shortage of Skilled Labour 0.125 -0.347 -0.05 0.0943 1

Inaccurate Productivity Rate 0.206 0.0154 -0.11 0.3479 0.418 1

calculation

Location Constraint of Project 0.104 -0.181 0.095 0.395 -0.13 -0.0513 1

Lack of Proper Planning 0.309 0.4775 0.011 -0.0587 -0.40 0.0085 0.102 1

Poor Productivity of Labour 0.165 -0.261 0.394 0.3022 -0.16 -0.0621 -0.260 0.101 1

Design Variation 0.154 0.286 -0.3 -0.2494 -0.11 -0.0038 -0.470 0.099 -0.2056 1

Inaccurate Productivity 0.172 0.0821 -0.51 0.1428 0.741 0.4624 -0.057 -0.15 -0.3739 0.198 1
estimation of Equipment

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