THE EASY PLAN PROGRAM AND OFFERING A FRAMEWORK IN SELECTING THE BEST DELAY ANALYSIS METHOD

Delays in the execution and operation of construction projects are of serious concern. In general, delay is described as any kind of extra time taken beyond previous mutual agreement. This is in uenced by a number of internal or external project parameters and often leads to problems and claims between owners, contractors and all parties involved. This issue is even more important in developing countries and is a crucial phenomenon for all involved parties of a contract. The importance of this issue has been compounded by the existence of dierent delay analysis methods and has made this issue a very challenging controversial area. Mostly, project managers and time scheduling analysts are faced with the problems of delay analysis and solving its induced claims. Furthermore, the system of delay analysis and evaluation is not included in most construction projects and, therefore, both contractor and owner may have diering views on delay analysis and its corresponding responsibilities. Thus, estimation of delay eects and determination of each party's responsibilities are critical. Hence, project managers and analysts must have an eective and ecient systematic approach for analyzing delays and determining responsibilities. In this paper, rst, a general comparison on the current available methods for analyzing delays in construction projects is introduced. Then, a windows-based delay analysis, identied as a more accurate method than other eective methods, is presented. The results of each method are discussed and compared through a case study run by the Easy Plan program. Windows-based methods are somewhat similar to each other but still have some dierences. Sometimes, their analysis results are dierent. The results of the present study demonstrate the limitations of each of these analysis methods and helps analysts in their proper selection. In fact, considering project conditions, analysts are assisted through dening and providing some eective rules.