Causes of Delay & Cost Overruns in Public Sector Building Projects in Punjab

Abstract

Construction projects are the main component of Infrastructure developments. It is continuing practice in developing countries for the development and growth of the nation. But it is highlighted in the literature that there are almost more than 50% projects which have to face delays and overrun cost. In developing nations like Pakistan, it is very difficult to manage these issues which ultimately affect general public by imposing extra taxes and inflation. This study has main objective to identify the main causes of overrun cost and delay in public projects and also compute the severity index for these factors. In this study there are main three factors of delaying in projects; poor planning, insufficient site supervision and lack of harmonization in different departments. A sample of 110 different stakeholders (clients, project directors, monitoring and evaluation team members etc.) were selected as respondents. Response rate of this survey was 88.7 with overall reliability (0.959) of the tool and data. A well structured questionnaire was used in this study having three main sections on the three potential factors of delay. Findings of this study have shown that there is strong correlation between these three factors of delay and overrun cost. On the other side severity index of 52 sub factors or sub components have shown that poor planning, poor scope of projects, poor supervision and management at site and frequent changes of scope in the projects due to clients are the main causes of delay and most occurred reason in the projects. Overall factors analysis shows that poor planning is most severe and frequently occurred factor of delay in public sector projects. Poor site supervision and lack of interdepartmental communication got second and third position in severity index. Overall this study concludes that stakeholders have to work on the planning and execution of projects to overcome the overrun cost and delay in construction projects.