Identifying and Prioritizing the Causes of Delays in Iran's gas Transmission Line Construction Projects

Poor time performance is a common problem in gas transmission line projects, which had many direct and indirect negative consequences. accordingly. The aim of this study is identifying and evaluating the causes of delays in the mentioned projects. In this regard, first, based on literature review, an initial causes of delays list was prepared, and then, to refine the causes extracted from literature, and also their ranking, the data was collected with the help of a questionnaire from the target community who were experts involved in the target projects and was analyzed using the combined technique of qualitative risk analysis and the best-worst method. The results showed that the five most important causes of delays in this study were: the client's delay in paying contractor, the financial instability of the market, the contractor's weakness in cash flow management, the delay in fulfilling obligations from the suppliers and subcontractor’s delays. Finally, each of the mentioned causes were described and the solutions to overcoming them were explained. Also, the evaluation within the seven groups showed that in the group of causes originating from the project contract documents, the short duration of the initial project contract; In the group of causes originating from interactions and communications among the project parties, the difficulty of coordination among them; In the group of causes originating from the client, the client’s delay in paying the contractor; In the group of causes originating from the contractor, the contractor's weakness in cash flow management; In the group of causes originating from the consultant, the bureaucracy of the consultant in the process of approval; In the group of causes originating from labor, the shortage of labor; And in the group of causes originating from environment, the financial instability of the markets was ranked first among the causes of their family.