Analysis of the relationships between causes of delay in construction projects in Bangladesh

There is an impression that, over the last two decades, high-rise construction projects in Dhaka, Bangladesh have been suffering from delays. Consequently, in-depth interviews, supported by a questionnaire, were conducted with 110 developers, consultants, project managers and contractors on thirty randomly selected private projects regarding the variables causing delays. Seventy-two probable delay variables were identified from a literature review and were included in the questionnaire in twelve groups over four operational stages. The thirty-one most important variables were identified based on the respondents' perception. This paper describes the application of factor analysis and stepwise regression techniques to provide a deeper understanding of the relationships among these variables. Factor Analysis was applied to the data from the survey to group them into factors in each of four different stages of the construction process. The paper also describes how the relationship among factors was established between stages using stepwise regression. Conclusions are drawn on the appropriateness of factor analysis and stepwise regression in enhancing the understanding of the relationships among causes of delays in construction projects. Although the data are Bangladesh specific, these statistical techniques can be usefully applied to other construction projects. In this application, factor analysis and stepwise regression showed that there was little association between factors that cause delays in one stage of the study and those in the next stage.