Assessing Causes of Time Overrun of Building and Road Construction Projects in Addis Ababa City ,Ethiopia

Since recent years, majority of the construction projects under taken in Addis Ababa City experience a varying magnitude of time overrun in which the projects become late in their completion. Due to different problems encountered during inception, design and implementation phases, the projects are exposed to the unwanted time overrun that in turn affects the overall performance of the projects. As a result of the encountered delay, it becomes difficult to complete the projects in allocated time duration. In relation to this, it is essential to identify the actual causes of delay in order to minimize or avoid the corresponding adverse impacts. Therefore, this study primarily aimed at investigating and scrutinizing the potential factors causing project time overrun in the city so that identification of the most influential factors and forwarding of the applicable remedial measures becomes possible. A semi structured questionnaire survey together with desk study was used in order to collect the research data on causes of delay and remedial measures. The questionnaires were distributed to project stakeholders (clients, consultants and contractors) and the purposive sampling was used in selecting the needed respondents. Fifty four delay causing factors were identified and grouped under ten categories according to similarity of their origin. In order to analyze severity of the factors, ranking of the factors was carried out based on the relative importance index value. Accordingly, the top most significant and least significant factors were identified. The top four most influential factors identified were stubbornness of consultants, inaccurate estimation of contract duration, delay in approvals and late decision making and slow mobilization of labor whereas inadequacy of allocated fund, low motivation and absence of incentives to contractors were the three least significant causes identified. So as to curb the occurrence and adverse impact of the factors, four different remedial measures were proposed to be applied and these measures are: using detailed work breakdown structure, proper responsibility assignment, using earned value principle for project performance management and using project software for scheduling