A study of the Causes of Schedule overrun in Indian High-rise construction using Relative Importance Index Aaditya Pratap Sanyal (Author) Department of Architecture and Planning Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur Kharagpur, India apsanyal@iitkgp.ac.in S. P. Bhattacharya (Author) Department of Architecture and Planning Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur Kharagpur, India spb@arp.iitkgp.ernet.in Abstract—Construction projects across the world are plagued with time and schedule overruns. Schedule overruns are caused due to a wide range of factors associated to site-related issues to the issues related to payment. Although the principal reasons for construction delays are comparable across different locations within a country, several factors pertaining to local industry, socio-economic issues, cultural effects and project characteristics also contribute to construction delays. Through a series of studies performed across the past few decades, it has been seen that the causes and extent of schedule overruns varies across different countries and no universal causes of delay have been identified. On these grounds, it can also be hypothesised that in a country as diverse as India, the causes of delay may vary across different states and regions. This research tries to ascertain the causes of schedule overrun associated to the various construction project locations in India, identified through a questionnaire survey and analysed using statistical methods. The findings of this study suggest that though there are certain similarities in the delay causes, but there is a difference between their relative importances. There are certain unique causes specific to some locations. Keywords-delay factors; high-rise; India; construction V. INTRODUCTION A construction project is an interpretation of an idea through a series of actions to produce either a new set of buildings and infrastructure or may involve alterations in the existing buildings and infrastructure. Construction projects involve varying degrease of complexity and the project duration can be range from few weeks to more than five years. However, in some cases, the duration may be very long. For example, the Sardar Sarovar Project of India which took almost 60 years to become operational [1]. Construction schedule overrun or delay can be simply defined as non-completion of project within the specified duration agreed upon in the contract. Delay can also 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 [2]. Schedule overrun or delays, apart from upsetting the plan targets, leads to cost overrun on account of inflationary increase, exchange rate variation and higher interest and administrative cost. Delays takes place due to factors such as paucity of financial resources, delay in obtaining clearances, delay in acquisition of land, poor performance of consultants, vendors and contractors, disputes and court cases, inadequate infrastructure support, resistance by land losers and poor law and order [3]. Schedule overrun has also been defined as “the extension of time beyond planned completion dates traceable to the contractors” [5]. Schedule overruns, also generally termed as delays, are “incidents that impact a project’s progress by postponing project activities”. Studies in construction activities from an array of countries, namely, Hong Kong, India, the United States, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Ghana showed that delay is a plebeian issue and an increasing concern irrespective of a countries development status or geographic location [6].In the recent past, studies have been performed by Akintoye et al. [7], Khanh et al. [8], Aziz [9], Gunduz et al. [10], Sweis et al. [11], Vimonsatit et al. [12], Fugar et al. [13], Ogunlana et al. [14] and, Toor et al. [15] for identifying the construction delay causes in Malaysia, Bangladesh, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Western Australia, Ghana, Vietnam and Thailand respectively. The findings of these studies were varied with most of the researches confirming financial difficulties, project planning and scheduling inefficiencies as some of the key important causes. In order to understand the delay causes facing the Indian construction industry, a detailed study performed by Doloi et al. [17] suggested that construction projects in India are reported failing across all the key performance measures including cost, time and quality performances. Gunawan et al. performed a comparative study of the schedule overrun for various development projects across China, India, Bangladesh and Thailand and concluded that the average schedule overrun is highest for India – 55% of actual schedule [16]. Reasons for these delays range from land acquisition, improper planning and budgeting, to poor coordination and monitoring of the projects [17]. GSTF Journal of Engineering Technology (JET) Vol.5 No.1, 2018 © The Author(s) 2018. This article is published with open access by the GSTF DOI: 10.5176/ 2251-3701_5.1.101