INTEGRATED TIME SCHEDULE DELAYS FORECASTING MODEL IN EGYPTIAN CONSTRUCTION SITES

Abstract

The primary issue in construction projects is the occurrence of time delays, which has detrimental impacts on both the construction site and its stakeholders. These delays pose risks, leading to exceeding time and cost constraints, sparking litigation, disputes, and even the abandonment of projects. Therefore, it is imperative to conduct a thorough analysis and research to identify the major causes of delays in construction sites. This paper aims to investigate all delay factors in construction, drawing insights from various construction types documented in the literature, across different periods, and considering diverse delay factors and groups observed in different countries. Through numerous brainstorming interviews and questionnaires, this research endeavours to compile a comprehensive list of seventy delay factors. Questionnaires were administered to gather insights from construction participants, such as site/design engineers, contractors, consultants, and owners, prioritizing the most likely delays occurring during the construction phase of Egyptian projects. The collected responses were then used to perform pairwise comparisons among construction delay factors. Statistical tools, specifically the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) were employed to rank the likelihood of delay occurrences and uncertainty estimates normalize. Subsequently, a proposed software application model was developed to predict construction project delays before implementation, utilizing several case studies of completed and delayed construction projects in Egypt. The proposed software serves two primary purposes: firstly, it predicts the time delay of a given project based on the analysis of a questionnaire survey utilizing the "SPSS & AHP" methods. Secondly, it analyses the factors contributing to construction project delays to ascertain the anticipated new actual duration of the project under study. Case studies were meticulously examined and compared, aligning the actual delay with the actual causes against the corresponding outcomes derived from the software model's analysis. The findings indicate that the lack of owner experience on construction sites holds the highest rank in terms of the most likely occurrence likelihood for construction projects. Subsequently, the key factors contributing to these delays include the contractor's inadequate experience leading to work errors, not enough skills in the staff of consultancy on sites of construction, and also problems in the cash flows in the construction process by the contractor.