Implementing Project Schedule Metrics to Identify the Impact of Delays Correlated with Contractors

Authors: Anthony J. Perrenoud (Arizona State University), (MS) and Kenneth T. Sullivan (Arizona State University), (PhD, MBA)
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Schedule management reduces schedule delays while optimizing positive opportunities to the
project timeline. The built industry continues to struggle to capture project metrics that will
improve supply chain management. The lack of performance metrics on construction projects
filters the actual project performance of the project stakeholders. Contractors can easily be blamed
for schedule delays because of the nature of construction projects. A large university capital
improvement organization recognizes their lack of performance information and begins
implementing a performance measurement system in 2005. The university measurements focus on
project impacts to cost, schedule, and quality in hopes that additional information will improve
risk management processes. This article reviews the schedule impacts that contractors create
within projects. Data was collected directly from both contractor and client project managers of
254 construction projects. Actual delays from contractors were found to be a small percentage of
the overall project schedule delays. More than half of the delays that contractors produced were
found to be correlated to the material suppliers.

Keywords: Risk Management, Contractor Delays, Performance Metrics, Schedule Management