11th International Congress on Advances in Civil Engineering, 21-25 October 2014

Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

Causes of Delays in Construction Projects in Turkey

M. S. Clfik1, . Sarkaya2, H. Altun3
1

Department of Civil Engineering, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey, sait.culfik@boun.edu.tr

Department of Civil Engineering, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey, ozgursarikaya@hotmail.com
3
Department of Civil Engineering, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey, hasan.altun@boun.edu.tr
2

Abstract
The construction industry plays a major role in the economy due to its contribution to employment and wealth.
The problem of delays in the construction industry is a global phenomenon. Delay is referred as the time overrun
beyond completion date specified in a contract. Delays can be minimized only when their causes are identified.
This investigation presents findings of a survey aimed at identifying the most important causes of delays in
construction projects from the viewpoint of construction contractors, owners and consultants in Turkey. Based
on literature review, a questionnaire is administered to the targeted respondents in Turkish construction industry
and a total of 151 responses returned. Results of the survey indicated that the top three common causes of delay
identified by all the three parties are suspension of the project by owner, delays in contractors progress payment
by owner, unrealistic project duration, respectively.
Keywords: Construction projects in Turkey; delay; contractor; consultant; owner.

1 Introduction
The problem of delays in the construction industry is a global phenomenon due to the extremely diverse nature
of construction projects. In construction, delay could be defined as the time overrun either beyond completion
date specified in a contract, or beyond the date that the parties agreed upon for delivery of a project (Assaf and
Al-Hejji, 2006). It is a project slipping over its planned schedule and is considered as common problem in
construction projects. To the owner, delay means loss of revenue through lack of production facilities and rentable space or a dependence on present facilities. In the same sense, to the contractor, delay means higher
overhead costs because of longer work period, higher material costs through inflation and due to labor cost
increases.
Unlike other types of industries where the development and manufacture of product can be standardized and
tested before being purchased, the nature of projects in the construction industry is extremely diverse. Every
project is unique. Even where identical buildings are under construction, the site conditions in each will differ
and introduce new challenges( Younis et al, 2008). Delays in construction can cause a number of changes in a
project such as late completion, lost productivity, acceleration, increased costs, and contract termination. The
party experiencing damages from delay needs to be able to recognize the delays and the parties responsible for
them in order to recover time and cost. However, in general, delay situations are complex in nature. A delay in
an activity may not result in the same amount of project delay. A delay caused by a party may or may not affect
the project completion date and may or may not cause damage to another party. A delay can be caused by more
than one party; however, it can also be caused by none of the parties, like delay that caused by bad weather
conditions.
Projects can be delayed due to number of reasons that may be due to the owner, the contractor, the consultants
acts, severe weather conditions or any other unexpected conditions. They may occur early or later in the project
development, alone, or with other delays. Delays can be minimized only when their causes are identified. In
1999, Al-Khalil and Al-Ghafly investigated the causes of delays in Saudi Arabia and found the significant causes

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as financial problems, changes both in the design and scope, being slow in making decisions and approvals by
owner, entanglement in acquiring work permit, and coordination and communication problems between the
parties. Okpala and Aniekwu (1988) carried a survey to find out major causes of delay and cost overrun in
Nigeria. The three major causes of delay are; shortage of materials, financing, payments for completed works
and poor contract regarding delay. Al-Momani (2000) conducted a survey to investigate the causes of delays on
130 public projects in Jordan. A survey indicated that poor design and negligence of the owner, change of orders,
weather condition, site condition, late delivery, economic conditions, and increase in quantities are the main
causes of delay. Bordoli and Baldwin (1998) examined the causes of delays in building projects in the United
States and found that Weather, labor supply, and subcontractors were the major causes of delays. In Lebanon,
Mezher and Tawil (1998) found that all three parties generally agreed on the ranking of the major categories of
delay factors as like financial issues, contractual relationship and project management respectively by owner,
contractor and consultant firms.
Chan and Kumaraswamy (2007) conducted a survey to evaluate the relative importance of 83 potential delay
factors in Hong Kong construction projects and found five principal factors: poor risk management and
supervision, unforeseen site conditions, slow decision making, client-initiated variations, and work variations. In
Jordan, the most common delay causes in construction were evaluated by using both, the data collected in a
survey conducted to residential projects consultant engineers, contractors, and owners, and interviews with
senior professionals in the field. Most correspondents agreed that, financial difficulties faced by the contractor
and too many change orders by the owner are the leading causes of construction delay. Severe weather
conditions and changes in government regulations and laws ranked among the least important causes (Sweis et
al, 2008). Fugar and Agyakwah-Baah (2010) investigated the causes of delay of building construction projects in
Ghana to determine the most important ones according to the key project participants; clients, consultants, and
contractors. Their field survey included 130 respondents made up of 39 contractors, 37 clients and 54
consultants. The relative importance of the individual causes and the groups were calculated and ranked by their
relative importance index. The overall results of the study indicate that the respondents generally agree that
financial group factors ranked highest among the major factors causing delay in construction projects and
materials group factors are second followed by scheduling and controlling factors.
Arditi et al. (1985) investigated the causes of delays in public projects in Turkey. The result indicate that lack of
resources, public agencies and contractors financial difficulties; organizational deficiencies and delays in
design work, frequent change of orders and considerable extra work are the most important sources of delays.
Polat and Ballard (2004) surveyed 116 Turkish contractor companies aiming to identify the main material and
time waste causes in the Turkish construction industry, and to establish an initial framework for future endeavors
associated with prevention and elimination of waste inherent in construction. Their study revealed that the top
three time waste causes are (1)delays in material supply, (2)receiving materials that do not fulfill project
requirements defined on design documents, and waiting for replacement, and (3)cash flow irregularities.
The literature generally classifies delays according to liability into the following two major types: excusable and
nonexcusable. An excusable delay is one that are beyond the control of the contractor, entitle the contractor to
extensions of contract time. Common excusable delays for a contractor include design problems, ownerinitiated
changes, unanticipated weather, labor disputes etc. Nonexcusable delays are those that are within the control of
the contractor, are the result of the contructors action, or are due to the failure of the contractor to anticipate
expected conditions, such as increased lost work days during severe weather conditions.
As like in many countries one of the most common problems in the construction projects in Turkey is also
delays. It is costly for all parties that involved in construction projects, ranging from owners to subcontractors.
Owners probably lose money by missing out on potential revenues from the use of the project and through
increased overheads for contract administration and supervision. Contractor also losses in overheads and profit
due to the increased prices through project progress and therefore have to tied-up their capital. Therefore,
determining the factors that cause delays in Turkey construction projects is essential. The major objective of this
study is to identify the major causes of delays in Turkey. In this respect, based on the literature review, a
questionnaire survey was prepared and administered to Turkish construction industry parties (owner consultants,
contractors).

2 Research Methodology
The goal of this study was to identify the causes of delay in Turkish construction industry. Therefore, fifty-one
factors that cause delays were selected which were identified through both literature review and conditions of
Turkey. A questionnaire was developed in order to evaluate the importance of the identified causes. In order to

M. S. Clfik, . Sarkaya, H. Altun

deliver the questionnaires to potential respondents mostly face-to-face deliveries are preferred to promote
respondents, however, different means such as email and post means are also employed.
The questionnaire is divided into two main parts. Part I is related to general information for both the company
and respondent. Owner, consultants and contractors were further requested to answer questions with related to
their previous experience in the construction industry and their opinions about delay in projects they
experienced. Part II includes the list of the identified causes of delay in construction project. These causes are
classified into nine groups according to the sources of delay: (1) financial related, (2) labor-related, (3)
revision/change-related, (4) contractual-related, (5) environment-related, (6) rules/regulations-related, (7)
equipment-related, (8) material-related and (9) project management/project control-related factors. Effects of
delays also took part in this section. Respondents, in the open-ended question of the questionnaire also point out
that other causes of delays and their effects that were not mentioned in the survey. These data were also gathered
through a questionnaire.
The relative importance index method (Sambasivan and Soon, 2007) is used to calculate the relative importance
of the various causes of delays. The five-point likert scale ranged from 1 (not important) to 5 (extremely
important) was adopted and transformed to relative importance indices (RII) for each factor.

3 Data Analysis
In order to explore the causes of delay in construction projects, a total of 151 responses (from 45 owners, 54
contractors and 52 consultants) were collected. The data were analyzed using Minitab 16 and MS Excel. 91
percent of respondent had at least a BS level education and 82 percent of them had at least 5 years experience in
industry from respondent firms which had an age interval of 21 to 60. Moreover, the occupational level of the
respondents is also shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Occupational level / Fields of specializations

Owner/Partner
Project Manager
Director
Contract Manager
Engineer
Architect
QA/QC
Others

Frequency
12
32
10
2
50
7
7
31

Percentage
7.90
21.30
6.60
1.30
33.10
4.65
4.65
20.50

The relative importance index, RII, was computed for each cause to identify the most significant causes as
shown in Equation 1. The causes were ranked based on RII values. From the ranking assigned to each cause of
delays, we were able to identify the most important factors.
(1)
where W is the weighting given to each factor by the respondents (ranging from 1 to 5), A is the highest weight
(i.e. 5 in this case), and N is the total number of respondents.
The RII value had a range from 0 to 1 (0 not inclusive), higher the value of RII, more important was the cause of
delays. The RII was used to rank (R) the different causes. These rankings made it possible to cross-compare the
relative importance of the factors as perceived by the three groups of respondents. Each individual causes RII
perceived by all respondents were used to assess the general and overall rankings in order to give an overall
picture of the causes of construction delays in Turkeys construction industry. These rankings also made it
possible to cross compare the relative importance of the items as perceived by the three groups of respondents.
The weighted average for each item for the three groups of respondents was determined and ranks (RII) were
assigned to each item representing the perception of the three groups.

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The primary data collected from the first and second part of the questionnaire was analyzed from the perspective
of clients, consultants and contractors. Each individual causes perceived by all respondents was computed for
both within the groups of factors and for overall analysis.
In order to evaluate the delay causes by each party independently, the contractors, consultants, and owners
data were separated and analyzed individually. This process is also useful in order to determine the degree of
agreement between each partys responses. The importance index was calculated for each party for all delay
causes and the delay causes were ranked accordingly within the each group.
Based on the ranking, the five most important causes of construction delays as perceived by owners were: (1)
Delays in contractors progress payment by owner; (2) Suspension of the project by owner; (3) Shortage of
labor; (4) Slow delivery of material; (5) Financing by contractor during construction.
The five most important causes of construction delays as perceived by consultants were: (1) Inadequate early
planning of the project; (2) Shortage of labor; (3) Suspension of the project by owner; (4) Unrealistic project
duration and (5) Delays in contractors progress payment by owner.
The five most important causes of construction delays as perceived by contractor were: (1) Delays in
contractors progress payment by owner; (2) Slowness of the owner decision-making process; (3) Suspension of
the project by owner; (4) Unrealistic Project duration and (5) Financing by contractor during construction.
Within the ten most important causes, two of the causes were under the financial related group, two were under
the changes/revision related group, another two were under contractual related group, and only one cause was
under labor related, material related, rules/regulations related and project management/control related group.
Table 2 summarizes RII and ranking of the categories of causes of delay as perceived by three different
respondent groups. It can be seen from the table that within five groups (Labor related, material related,
equipment related, finance related, changes/revision related delays) there is nearly no difference in the ranking
orders of important index by owner and consultant. There is a closer consensus between consultants, owner and
overall groups. However contractor ranked labor and financial related groups as the most important two factors.
Rules/Regulations related delays group was seemed the less important group for all parties.
Table 2. The ranking result of groups of factors
Groups of Delay

Owner

Consultant

Contractor

Overall

RII

Rank

RII

Rank

RII

Rank

RII

Rank

Finance related delays

0.80

0.77

0.80

0.79

Labor related delays

0.85

0.82

0.76

0.81

Changes/revision related delays

0.79

0.78

0.79

0.78

Contractual related delays

0.77

0.76

0.74

0.76

Environmental related delays

0.71

0.72

0.65

0.69

Equipment related delays

0.81

0.77

0.70

0.76

Rules/Regualtions related delays

0.77

0.76

0.75

0.76

Material related delays

0.83

0.78

0.76

0.79

Project management / Control related delays

0.75

0.74

0.66

0.72

4 Conclusions
This paper investigated the major causes of delay in Turkeys construction industry through a questionnaire
survey among contractors, consultants and owners. Fifty-one factors were identified as a result of a

M. S. Clfik, . Sarkaya, H. Altun

comprehensive literature survey and conditions of construction sector in Turkey. The ten top-ranked factors that
cause delays in construction projects in Turkey accorded by the construction participants are found as follows ;
(1)Suspension of the project by owner, (2)Delays in contractors progress payment by owner, (3)Unrealistic
project duration, (4)Slowness of the owner decision making process, (5)Inadequate early planning of the project,
(6)Financing by contractor during construction, (7)Shortage of labor, (8)Slow delivery of materials, (9)Obtaining
permits from municipality and (10)Design changes by owner or his agent during construction.
By foreseeing the common problems identified in this study and maybe others in future projects, construction
participants in Turkey can both avoid delays for which they are responsible and mitigate severe effects of the
other delays.

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