Analysis of Highway Construction Project Time Overruns Using Survey Approach

A higher number of highway construction projects are experiencing delays in their scheduled completion time, and this situation, in turn, leads to overrun in the schedule as well as cost. This paper mainly categorizes the causes of time overrun and provides a mathematical model for predicting the time overrun percentage, using highway projects in Northern India as a case study. A survey of randomly selected samples yielded responses from 72 contractors and 44 clients. The study depends on forty-eight factors that influence schedule delays in highway projects. Based upon the average medium fuzzy influencing value and the respective frequency index value, the time overrun causing factors were ranked and categorized under different time overrun risk categories, namely red zone, yellow zone, and green zone. The analysis of the received responses indicates complications in the land acquisition process, utility shifting, constructability under traffic, lack of project planning and design changes were the top five most critical time overrun causing factors in highway projects. The medium fuzzy influencing value and the frequency index value for these five factors were above 18% and 80%, respectively. These factors lie under the red zone and need close attention. Factor such as opposing the projects by locals also gained much importance in this study as compared to previous studies as it lies under the red zone. The prediction model developed through the application of multiple regression analysis can explain 71.9% of the variability in the data, which is an excellent indicator of the model’s expected performance.