Delay Analysis in Construction: A Quick Guide

If all construction projects ran without a hitch, there’d be little need for project management software. However, we know that internal and external forces create construction delays that impact the project schedule. To have a successful project completion, general contractors rely on delay analysis.

What is delay analysis and what should be included in a delay analysis report? We’ll get to that shortly. There’s also more than one way to analyze delays, and we’ll explore those different methods as well. Readers can download free templates to help with delay analysis or upgrade to project management software to better manage construction schedules.

What Is Delay Analysis?

Delay analysis refers to evaluating and determining the causes, extent and impact of delays during a construction project. It helps identify who or what is responsible for delays, whether due to contractor issues, design problems, weather or external factors. This analysis is often critical in resolving disputes and making decisions about schedule adjustments, costs and penalties.

The key steps in delay analysis typically involve gathering all relevant project documentation, including contracts, schedules, progress reports and correspondence. First, understand when delays occurred, how long they lasted and which activities were affected. Then, categorize those delays into excusable (out of the contractor’s control), non-executable (contractor’s fault) or compensable (due to delays caused by others that impact the project). The impact is then assessed and causes are analyzed.

Project management software can help with delay analysis in several ways. ProjectManager is award-winning project and portfolio management software with features to schedule, monitor and manage construction projects. For example, our real-time project or portfolio dashboards provide an overview of the project’s progress and performance to quickly catch the cause of construction delays and resolve them. Easy-to-read graphs and charts show key performance indicators (KPIs), such as time, cost and workload that allow general contractors to see how actual progress differs from planned progress, analyze the cause of the delay and get construction projects back on track. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

ProjectManager's dashboard — ProjectManager’s real-time dashboards help with delay analysis. Learn more

What Is a Delay Analysis Report?

A delay analysis report is a detailed document that outlines the findings of a delay analysis conducted on a construction project. It assesses the causes, effects and duration of delays, and explains how they impact the project schedule and overall completion.

This report is usually used to resolve disputes, manage claims and make decisions about extensions of time or additional costs. General contractors and project managers can also use it to understand how delays affect the project and what actions need to be taken to minimize further disruptions.

What Should Be Included in a Delay Analysis Report?

A comprehensive delay analysis report should include the following key sections to provide a complete and clear picture of the delays in a construction project. Here’s the ideal way to structure these sections.

Project Schedule Overview: Briefly describe the project, including its scope, location, key milestones and overall objective. The original baseline schedule, identifying key dates, such as start date, milestones and planned completion date. Provide any updated schedules that reflect changes to the timeline and summarize the critical path and how it relates to the project completion.
Delay Events Description: List each significant delay chronologically, providing specific dates and duration. Describe the type of delay and categorize them. Where applicable, identify who was responsible for each delay.
Delay Analysis Methodology: Specify which delay analysis method was used, the justification for using that method and detail the data sources used in the analysis, such as schedule updates, project logs and progress reports.
Impact of Delay Events: Describe how each delay impacted the critical path and project milestones. Where possible, quantify the delays in terms of time and identify whether they caused an extension to the project timeline. If relevant, describe how the delays have impacted project costs, including potential cost overruns, additional labor, extended equipment rental or material costs. Discuss any effect the delays had on resource allocation and whether reallocation or downtime occurred as a result.
Delay Mitigation Efforts: Detail any efforts made to mitigate or recover from delays. Assess the success of the mitigation efforts in reducing the delay or minimizing its impact on the overall project.
Supporting Construction Documentation: Provide copies of the original and updated schedules, highlighting changes due to delays. Included progress reports, any relevant communications, visual documentation and, if available, construction site daily logs.

Types of Delay Analysis Methods

There are numerous delay analysis methods. Each is designed to assess and quantify delays in construction projects, but they take a different approach to evaluating the impact on the project schedules. Here’s an overview of some methods.

As-Planned vs. As-Built Comparison

This method compares the original baseline schedule with the actual progress. It identifies which activities were delayed or completed earlier and highlights any schedule discrepancies. This shows how a project deviated from the original plan and assesses the impact of delays. It’s typically used to demonstrate the overall variance between the planned schedule and actual progress. It’s simple to implement.

Impacted As-Planned

This method takes the original as-planned schedule and applies the delays to it to see how they would affect the project timeline if the delays hadn’t occurred. This estimates the effect of delays on the planned schedule without considering changes in the actual work completed, and is useful for understanding the potential impact of delays on the original project plan.

Collapsed As-Built

In this method, the as-built schedule is collapsed to fit into the as-planned schedule, essentially removing any delays that occurred and attempting to show how the project would have progressed had there been no disruptions. This estimates the time that could have been saved if no delays had occurred and how the schedule would have been affected. It helps show how delays impacted the overall project timeline by visually simplifying the impact of delays.

Time-Impact Analysis

The time-impact analysis is a method that evaluates the effect of delays on the schedule, predicting how specific delays will impact the project timeline. This forward-looking approach determines how a delay will impact future activities and the project’s completion data. This provides a detailed analysis of how delays affect the project and allows for proactive planning.

As-Built Critical Path Method

This method builds a schedule based on actual progress and analyzes the critical path based on the work completed up to the current point in time. This determines the current critical path of the project based on actual progress and shows how delays have affected the critical activities. It’s detailed and reflects the project’s current status, which gives an accurate view of how delays impact the timeline.

Longest Path Analysis

This method identifies the longest path through the project schedule, similar to the critical path method, but considers alternative paths that may not necessarily be critical in a traditional sense. It’s used to find the most time-consuming sequence of activities, which may not always be the critical path, but could still delay the project. The advantage of this is that it can uncover delays that are significant but not always part of the critical path.

Why Is Schedule Delay Analysis Important in Construction?

Schedule delay analysis is important in construction for several reasons. It helps all stakeholders, such as contractors, project owners, subcontractors and consultants, understand the causes, impacts and potential solutions for delays that arise during a project. It does this by identifying the cause of delays and understanding who is responsible for what. It’s a root-cause analysis that pinpoints whether delays are caused by poor planning, lack of resources, design changes or external disruptions.

This can protect against legal disputes. Delay analysis helps document when and why delays occurred, which is vital for negotiating extensions of time, avoiding penalties or pursuing claims. A clear and well-documented process helps settle disputes before they escalate into costly and time-consuming legal battles.

Using delay analysis helps manage construction schedules and project costs. It also improves future project planning by learning from the lessons of past delays and understanding the root causes of delays to later implement better strategies for managing risks in future projects. Also, through clear documentation and aligning expectations, general contractors can facilitate better communication among stakeholders as well as ensure that the project is completed on time and within budget.

Free Construction Delay Analysis Templates

Several free templates can be downloaded from our site can help with delay analysis for those who aren’t ready to upgrade to project management software. We have over 100 free project management templates for Excel and Word that cover all aspects of managing a project across numerous industries. Here are a few that can help figure out why a construction project is delayed.

Construction Schedule Template

To avoid delays, construction projects need accurate schedules. Our free construction schedule template provides the how and why of a project, detailing the timeline and providing a framework for project managers to keep it on schedule and within its budget.

Critical Path Template

Using the critical path is one method for delay analysis. Using this free critical path template for Excel is easier than having to do the calculations by hand. This free template allows project managers to visualize the longest, most important chain of tasks that must be completed to deliver a successful project.

Project Dashboard Template

This free project dashboard template for Excel provides a high-level overview of the construction project. Pie charts and bar charts make it easy to track tasks, workload, costs and more to ensure the project is progressing as scheduled.

How ProjectManager Helps With Delay Analysis in Construction

As useful as project templates can be, they will eventually be frustrating to users. That’s because construction projects are dynamic and Excel spreadsheets are static documents. Users are constantly taken away from their work to manually update these spreadsheets, which are poor substitutes for real collaborative tools. That’s why construction crews upgrade to construction project management software.

ProjectManager is award-winning construction project and portfolio management software preferred by construction professionals. Real-time dashboards track project progress, but so do customizable reports on variance, status, workload, timesheets and more. These reports can be filtered and shared to keep stakeholders updated.

Make Construction Schedules With Gantt Charts

Before general contractors can monitor and track construction projects, they have to schedule them. Our robust Gantt charts can schedule all project tasks and subtasks, but also resources and their related costs. All four types of task dependencies can be linked to avoid delays and cost overruns. The critical path can be found faster than on a template. All a user has to do is filter for it and the timeline shows it instantly. Then, when the schedule is done, set a baseline to track progress in real time.

Reallocate Resources to Mitigate Construction Schedule Delays

Resource management tools help keep projects moving forward as planned. First, when onboarding the team, set their availability, including PTO, vacation and global holidays and skill sets. This helps with assigning them tasks. Then, check out the color-coded workload chart for an overview of resource allocation. From there, balance the team’s workload to keep everyone working at capacity and avoid burnout. There’s even a team page for a daily or weekly summary of their activity, which can be filtered by progress, priority and more.