An Exploration Of Causes For Delay And Cost Overrun In Construction Projects: A Case Study Of Australia, Malaysia & Ghana

Delay and cost overrun are the key problems of any construction projects. These issues are causing the negative impact on the development of country economic growth and prosperity. To overcome these issues, the paper is aimed to ascertain the most impelling factors causing the project delay and cost overrun, and highlight the possible measures so that the impact on construction projects could be reduced. Each country’s quantitative data from past studies was selected to analyse and recommend the effective measures. A questionnaire survey was conducted in all three case studies adopting different data collection strategies. The main reason of selecting three case studies is to outline the comparative analysis of delay factors and to classify these factors into different priority level of influence in project delay from country to country. The findings from three case studies exposed that the most influential factors in Australia are (1) planning and scheduling deficiencies, (2) methods of construction, (3) effective monitoring and feedback process, whereas in Ghana, (1) delay in payment certificates (2) underestimating of project cost, (3) complexity and size of projects are the most influential factors. However, in Malaysia (1) Contractor’s improper planning, (2) poor site management and (3) inadequate contractor’s experience are the most impelling factors causing project delay and cost overrun. This paper has also analysed the average and least impact of the delay factors causing project delay and cost overrun in those countries. The paper concludes that there are diverse groups of delay factors from one country to another country that cause the project delay and cost overrun. It also concludes that there are diverse measures according to the nature of delay factor are necessary to reduce the impact on project delay and cost overrun in the construction industry in both developed and developing countries.

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