Causes of Delay in Public Building Construction Projects: A Case of Addis Abeba Administration, Ethiopia

Abstract

The time overrun in construction projects has become one of the most common problems in the industry that cause multitude of negative effects on the projects and its stakeholders. This study focused on assessing the main causes of delay in public building construction projects in Addis Ababa Administration mainly undertaken by grade one contractors. In these projects, 42 delay causing events in the Addis Ababa public building construction projects were identified and categorized in to five main category groups, and the most important and critical causes of public building construction delay causing factors were evaluated and ranked based on the RRI(Ranking and computation of relative importance index)values from the data collected in a questionnaire survey of three groups of respondents- clients, consultant and contractors in the construction industry. The survey findings revealed the top ten factors that cause construction delays in the public building construction projects in Addis Ababa are: (1) Difficulty in project financing (poor financial system); (2) Poor Project management system;(3) Delay in issuance of designs and working drawings; (4) Shortage of availability of imported construction materials and goods on market; (5) Design errors and complexity of designs;(6)Delay in progress payments for completed works; (7) Late start & resource mobilization to site; (8) Financing problems; (9) Inaccurate Site investigation Report;(10) Price Inflation. Furthermore, the ranking of the factors tested the agreement among the respondents and finally agreement test reveal that there appears a positivecorrelation between the groups in noticing and ranking the set of delay causes. The study recommended in general and particularly to all the parties for mitigating factors causing time overrun.