An Evaluation on causes of delays related to pre- construction period approval process of hotel construction projects

Abstract

A project consists of a defined timeline. Any failures in achieving the targeted timeline may create difficulties in project financing and also in project management. Due to several reasons, the actual timeline of a project can differ from the expected timeline. A construction project goes through the initiation phase and planning phase, before commencing the construction works that are conceded as the pre-construction stage. The tourism sector plays a crucial role in the Sri Lankan economy. Accordingly, there is an essential and continuous requirement for large-scale tourism hotel construction projects. In Sri Lanka, for large-scale construction projects, there are a lot of approval burdens that can be identified within the pre-construction phase. The pre-construction stage of the large-scale hotel project consists of many approvals/clearances from relevant government authorities and pre-feasibility studies that have frequently lead projects towards delays. Hence, this research focused on the delays related to the preconstruction period approval process of large-scale hotel construction projects. To accomplish the aim, of the study, a literature review was carried out to review the details on the pre-construction approval process, causes of delays effect on the same process, and recommendations /strategies to overcome the causes of delays. Empirically, five (05) large-scale hotel construction projects were selected as case studies and identified the variations of the actual time duration versus expected time duration for each case. Also, 20 causes of delays in the approval process were uncovered by interviewing the project stakeholders. “Consultant and design team delays” and “the complication of the approval process” are the main causes of delays that were identified in this research. Finally, the research concluded several recommendations/strategies to overcome the respective delay causes; e.g. to overcome the institutional framework-related delays; “adoption of a single-window approval process” and “create high accessibility for the information”.