Construction schedule based delay analysis in road and building projects

Abstract

The delays in the construction projects are a global phenomenon and are considered as a standout amongst the most tireless issues all through the world. Therefore, it is essential to analyze the delay accurately, and various delay analysis methods are used for quantifying the magnitude of the delay and it can be observed that the construction schedule plays a vital role for all these methods. With the advancement of the technology, various project management soft wares have been invented under different brand names to do the delay analysis processes and they have the potential to assist plan, prepare construction schedule, arrange and control resource tools and develop resource estimates. Even though that there are so many project management softwares have been invented with the development of technology, the proper usage of a construction schedule is questionable. According to the survey carried out by the Department of Census and Statistics Srilanka, it has been revealed that the majority of the Srilankan construction industry comprises with the roads and building sector by the year 2015. Thus, this study was focused on improvement of the construction schedule-based delay analysis in Road and Building Construction sector in Sri Lanka. Initially a literature survey was done in order to identify the currently used methods for analyzing delays and applicability of construction schedule for each method. Accordingly, it was revealed that the construction schedule is a mandatory item for each and every method. Thereafter a multiple case study and in-depth study was carried out on 26 past completed road and building projects separately to identify that how the delay has been established in these two sectors and the significance of the delay claim in each sector. The analysis reveals that the significance of the claims obtained from the road projects are very high and mostly a construction schedule has been used there. Having done that by doing an in-depth analysis on those projects it was identified that what are the reasons for the difference in significance of delay claims obtained road and building projects and under that 11 factors were identified. By doing a questionnaire survey on these identified factors, their severities were identified and to find out the solutions to overcome the top five factors among them, an expert interview process was carried out. xi Finally, the findings can be concluded that the applicability of construction schedule-based delay analysis is vital in establishing claims in road and building projects. The significance of the delay claims established in road projects are much higher than the delay claims established in building projects. To bridge this gap in the building construction sector, it is required to have much more contribution from the professional bodies and the other relevant organizations related to the construction industry. In addition to that it is required to breakdown the monopoly which has been created some certain professions involved in the construction industry and avoid discriminations among the professionals involving in the building construction sector.