The root causes of construction project failure

Document Type : Article

Authors

1 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

2 Department of Civil Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Construction projects play an important role in the economic development of every country. Nevertheless, review of projects documents indicates that in most cases, the projects are not finished on schedule and on assigned budget, such that they sometimes loss their economic justification, and simply fail. Consequently, devising suitable solutions is essential to prevention of such failures. This is impossible without identifying the foremost causes of failure. In this study, first, all factors of failure are identified using Fault Tree Analysis (FTA). FTA as a diagnostic tool allows us to efficiently isolate root causes of failure. To rank these factors, dedicated specialists are requested to assess the risk of each cause using linguistic terms; thereby relevant calculations are carried out using the Linguistic Weighted Average (LWA). Undeniably, considering the complexity of construction projects and incomplete expert knowledge, judgments must not be made using crisp value conception. Hence, fuzzy theory is utilized to achieve more accurate results. Results indicate that the majority of problems in projects stem from financial concerns and shortcoming of bidding process. In the last section, an actual case study is used to validate our results.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

References
1. Shahhosseini, V. and Sebt, M.H. Competency-based selection and assignment of human resources to construction projects", Scientia Iranica, 18(2), pp. 163-
180 (2011). 2. http://www.entekhab.ir/fa/news/257038.
3. Han, S.H., Yun, S., Kim, H., Kwak, Y.H., Park, H.K. and Lee, S.H. Analyzing schedule delay of mega project: lessons learned from Korea train express",
IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 56,
pp. 243-256 (2009).
4. Abdul-Rahman, H., Takim, R. and Min, W.S.
Financial-related causes contributing to project delays",
Journal of Retail & Leisure Property, 8, pp. 225-
238 (2009).
5. Yang, J.B. and Wei, P.R. Causes of delay in the
planning and design phases for construction projects",
J. Architect. Eng., 16(2), pp. 80-83 (2010).
6. Soliman, E.M. Delay causes in Kuwait construction
projects", in: AICSGE7, Proceedings of Seventh
Alexandria International Conference on Structural and
Geotechnical Engineering, pp. 57-67 (2010).
7. Hasseb, M., Bibi, A., Dyian, M. and Rabbani, W.
Problems of projects and e ects of delays in the
construction industry of Pakistan", Austr. J. Bus.
Manage. Res., 1(5), pp. 41-50 (2011).
8. Doloi, H., Sawhney, A., Iyer, K.C. and Rentala,
S. Analysing factors a ecting delays in Indian construction
projects", International Journal of Project
Management, 30, pp. 479-489 (2012).
9. Ezeldin, A. and Abdel-Ghany, M. Causes of construction
delays for engineering projects: an Egyptian
perspective", AEI, pp. 54-63 (2013).
10. Rahsid, Y., Haq, S. and Aslam, M. Causes of delay in
construction projects of Punjab-Pakistan: an empirical
study", J. Basic Appl. Sci. Res., 3(10), pp. 87-96
(2013).
11. Marzouk, M.M. and El-Rasas, T.I. Analyzing delay
causes in Egyptian construction projects", Journal of
Advanced Research, 5(1), pp. 49-55 (2014).
12. Ruqaishi, M. and Bashir, H. Causes of delay in
construction projects in the oil and gas industry in
the gulf cooperation council countries: a case study",
J. Manage. Eng., 31(3), pp. 5014-5017 (2013).
108 V. Shahhosseini et al./Scientia Iranica, Transactions A: Civil Engineering 25 (2018) 93{108
13. Remon, F.A. and Abdel-Hakam, A.A. Exploring
delay causes of road construction projects in Egypt",
Alexandria Engineering Journal, 55(2), pp. 1515-1539
(2016).
14. Gunduz, M., Nielsen, Y. and Ozdemir, M. Quanti cation
of delay factors using Relative Importance Index
(RII) method for construction projects in Turkey", J.
Manage. Eng., 29(2), pp. 133-139 (2013).
15. Ferdous, R. Methodology for computer aided fuzzy
fault tree analysis", Thesis presented to the Memorial
University of Newfoundland in Partial Ful llment of
the Requirement for Master Degree (2006).
16. Johnson, P.A. Fault tree analysis of bridge failure due
to scour and channel instability", J. Infrastruct. Syst.,
ASCE, 5(1), pp. 35-41 (1999).
17. Wu, D. and Mendel, J.M. A comparative study of
ranking methods, similarity measures and uncertainty
measures for interval type-2 fuzzy sets", Information
Sciences, 179(8), pp. 1169-1192 (2009).
18. Cochran, W.G., Sampling Techniques, 3rd Ed., New
York: John Wiley & Sons (1977).
19. Gilan, S.S., Sebt, M.H. and Shahhosseini, V. Computing
with words for hierarchical competency based
selection of personnel in construction companies",
Applied Soft Computing, 12, pp. 860-871 (2012).
20. Nasirzadeha, F., Rouhparvarb, M., Mazandarani
Zadehc, H. and Rezaie, M. Integrating system dynamics
and fuzzy bargaining for quantitative risk allocation
in construction projects", Scientia Iranica A, 22(3),
pp. 668-678 (2015).
21. Levy, P.S. and Lemeshow, S., Sampling of Populations:
Methods And Applications, 3rd Ed., New York, Wiley-
Interscience (1999).
22. Mendel, J.M. Fuzzy sets for words: a new beginning",
In: Proceeding of IEEE International Conference on
Fuzzy Systems, St. Louis, MO, pp. 37-42 (2003).
23. Mendel, J.M., John, R.I. and Liu, F.L. Interval
type-2 fuzzy logical systems made simple", 5 IEEE
Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, 14(6), pp. 808-821
(2006).
24. Chen, S.M. and Lee, L.W. Fuzzy multiple criteria
hierarchical group decision-making based on interval
type-2 fuzzy sets", IEEE Transactions on Systems,
Man and Cybernetics, Part A: Systems and Humans,
40(5), pp. 1120-1128 (2012).
Scientia Iranica
Volume 25, Issue 1
Transactions on Civil Engineering (A)
January and February 2018
Pages 93-108

Files

History

  • Receive Date: 21 October 2015
  • Revise Date: 17 May 2016
  • Accept Date: 26 September 2016

Share

How to cite

Statistics