Exploring Delays in Victoria-Based Astralian Pipeline Projects

Abstract

Concerns for delays and disruptions are common in almost all projects including linear constructions such as pipeline projects. Due to various inherent complexities in such projects, delays could be resulting from several reasons and in most cases the resultant impacts are significantly detrimental. For example, delays could lead to some serious time and/or cost overrun issues thereby adversely affecting the contractors, clients and other stakeholders in different degrees. Consolidating useful knowledge from related research and lessons from recent projects will be beneficial for rationalized project management. Especially, identifying significant root causes of delays and accordingly developing suitable management methods (e.g. prevention measures) are essential to effectively ensuring successful project outcomes. Thus, an ongoing research by the authors aims to study specific cost overrun and time overrun issues in the linear construction projects in Victoria, Australia so as to develop suitable knowledge-based management by rational project planning protocols, control and prevention measures. The research methods considered include detailed literature reviews, targeted interviews with several project managers, and case-study based knowledge mining from some pipeline projects. This paper reports interim key findings from ongoing research, which includes discussions on root causes of delays and management approaches in linear construction projects.