Abstract

Disputes in the construction industry originate primarily from the occurrence of delays, which are the major causes of time and cost overruns in construction projects. Delays affect project parties, the owner and the contractor. Loss of either anticipated revenue or opportunity cost, on the owner’s side, and increased overhead cost, cost escalation and liquidated damages, on the contractor’s side, are considered as the main impacts of delays on key project stakeholders. Meanwhile, preparing delay claims is a time consuming process that requires extensive resources. Facilitating this process will benefit both project parties. In this regard, this research presents a new systematic delay analysis technique that is capable of evaluating concurrent delays, while considering the critical path of the project. The developed technique precisely allocates delays among the different project parties. The technique is tested against a hypothetical case to highlight its advantages and limitations, in comparison to existing delay analysis methods. In support of the proposed technique, a robust expert system is designed to classify the different types of delays, as well as to offer recommendations on delays or delaying events. The expert system and the proposed delay analysis technique are integrated with a scheduling software which accesses a project database. Likewise, an embedded feature of computing associated costs enhances the capability of the system. The developed system assist the analyst to reduce the time and cost associated with delay claim preparation in a systematic approach. Finally, the reliability of the integrated system is validated through a real case.