Review Article: Investigating the Delay Factors of Construction Projects Using Narrative Analysis Approach

Construction delays are common problems in civil engineering projects in Arab countries. Because of the importance of this problem, the study reviewed many studies that dealt with the topic of delay in the construction projects of their countries. The study included the delay in projects in Iraq. Jorden, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Yemen, Egypt, Sudan, Algeria and Morocco. The projects included infrastructure facilities, public buildings, housing complexes, water treatment plants, sports facilities, water supply, roads. Quantitative method via a structured questionnaire was implemented in all these studies, the questionnaires were distributed to experienced project parties such as the owner, contractor, consultant and other parties. The relative importance method was used to analyze the results of the questionnaire to obtain the highest ten or five factors with the highest rank which cause delay. The results showed that the groups of contractor and owner has the highest percentage and were repeated several times compared to the rest of the groups. The top five factors causing delay of construction projects in Arab countries are, problems of cash flow and ﬁnancial by owner, difficulties in financing the project by the contractor, Poor site management and supervision of the contractor, selecting the contractor who has the lowest bid and ineffective planning and scheduling by contractors.


Introduction
The delay in construction projects is defined as the difference or time difference between the project finish date specified in the contract and the actual date of project completion and completion. (Junaid 1). Bassioni and El-Razek identified that delay in construction project is considered one of the most common problems causing a great number of a negative effect on the project and its participating parties, therefore must identify the actual causes of delay in order to minimize and avoid the delays and their corresponding expenses. Time lag in the completion of activities from its specified time as in contract considered as construction delay. The effect of delays in construction projects can be summarized as a figure (1).

Research objective & research design
Narrative analysis is one of the tools of scientific research sober in the field of project management, which is a kind of quantitative analysis, as this will be based on the analysis of a large number of previous studies on a research problem, and then explore the differences between these studies in order to reach new facts and knowledge.
The narrative analysis methodology consists of the following steps: 1) Formulation of the research question: The research question in this study is represented as follows: (What are the main reasons for Delay Factors of Construction Projects) 2) Extraction of raw data from previous studies 3) Data organization.

Data collection
The researcher organized the data extracted from previous studies based on the researcher name, the place of research, research year, research means, the title of the research, objective research and the main results.   Researchers study the reasons for the delay in road construction, 186 questionnaires were distributed to the project parties except the owner who represents the government in road projects. The method of analysis was as shown in the table (2). The ten main factors which caucus delay shown as in the figure 4. The contractor factors had the largest percentage while equipment and design take a second rate in causing the delay as shown in

Results and Discussion
This paper has sought to review the published research on construction delay in Arab countries, the following conclusions of the research are drawn 4.1.When discussing the factors-related groups of the top ten or five ranks of delay factors, the following results were found: The impact of the 'Contractor' related factors on the occurrence the delay had the first arrangement with proportion, 60%, 40%, 40%, 30% and 28% for other groups. The impact of the 'Owner' related factors on the occurrence the delay had the first arrangement with proportion, 60% and twice with 40% for other groups. The impact of the 'External' related factors on the occurrence the delay had the first arrangement with proportion 50% for other groups. The impact of the 'Finance Competence' related factors on the occurrence the delay had the first arrangement with proportion 50% for other groups. The impact of the 'Monitoring and Controlling Planning' related factors on the occurrence the delay had the first arrangement with proportion 40% for other groups. The impact of the 'Managerial' related factors on the occurrence the delay had the first arrangement with proportion 67% for other groups. Through this we conclude that the most important major players in the occurrence of delays in construction projects for Arab countries are the return of the first to the contractor related factors and in the second to the owner related factors.

4.2.
When counting the factors that cause delays in construction projects for each Arab country under study that took the top ten or five ranks, it notes that there are factors that are repeated several times, which indicates their high relative importance and it risk of causing delay. As shown in table 13:

Table (13) the frequency of factor rank type
We note from the table that the cash flow and the financial problems of the owner took the first rank for three times and the second rank twice as the highest factor that leads to the delay in construction projects in the Arab countries under study, While the financial difficulties faced by the contractor to provide cash for the project took the first rank twice. The poor site management and supervision of the contractor, which relates to the ability of the contractor and his team to manage and supervise the project, took the first rank and was repeated as a second, third and fourth rank among the most important factors in the delay, While the factor of ineffective planning and scheduling by contractor appeared seven times among the highest delay factors, which indicates its high relative importance in causing a delay in Arab countries. Another important factor caused by the owner is selecting the contractor who has the lowest bid, which repeated three times, and that indicates his important role in the delay because the contractor is unable to perform his duties.

Recommendations
1-The owner must pay the contractor's financial dues and pay them on time and provide sufficient liquidity for that because any delay in payment reflects on the contractor and weakens the ability to finance the project.
2-The contractor should make sure that he has the capital that enables him to complete the project in order to be able to pay direct and indirect costs and get rid of the problems of payment to suppliers.
3-The contractor must develop the administrative and technical capabilities of his and his team to raise the level of efficiency and gain skills in project management in terms of planning, scheduling and control methods. 4-The contractor should not be chosen at the lowest prices without looking at his experience, efficiency and previous performance because the contractor's poor performance and experience in implementing the project will lead to problems and conflicts between the project parties, especially with the owner in terms of matching the specifications and materials, which leads to the delay of the project