Analysis of significant factors causing delay and cost overruns in Tanzania construction projects.

The purpose of this study was to identify the factors that have largest effect on time and cost overruns on construction projects. The research focused on identifying and ranking the main factors causing project delay and cost overruns in the construction projects. Review of literatures, discussions and field experience, indicates that there are large number of factors that could possibly have an grouped into five major categories, which are; project financing, change in scope/ design, exogenous factors, project organization, planning and controlling and contractual relationship. The importance Weights technique, together with Rank Agreement Factors and Percentage Score Agreement were adopted for the analysis of the data collected from the five TANESCO case studies. The results of the research indicate that changes in scope design; project financing; and project organization, planning and controlling, are the three major causes of the delay and cost overruns, among these categories, presented the biggest problem. It has been also identified local firms have a small knowledge in controlling and managing of the construction projects, and these resulting into cost and time overruns in most of the construction projects in Tanzania.