NEED FOR JIT IMPLEMENTATION: MATERIAL SHORTAGE PROBLEMS AS A CAUSE OF DELAY IN CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS IN EGYPT

Materials delivery is generally blamed for overall project delay, many studies rank it at the top of causes of project delays. In an international setting, materials delivery was ranked as the sixteenth technical delay causes in construction projects Yates (2007). Another study done on the construction of residential projects in the State of Kuwait found that late delivery of materials causes one-fourth of total project delays Koushki, &Kartam, (2004). Furthermore, the UAE construction industry study by Faridi & El-Sayegh, (2006) ranked materials delivery as the eighth significant cause of schedule delays. The identification of factors leading to construction delays was found to differ from study to study in the literature. Shi and Arditi (2001) put together the fundamental causes of delay in order to determine their relationship with project completion Chan (1998) looked into the principal factors affecting the duration of construction projects. Assaf et al. (1995) outlines the main causes of delay in the Saudi construction projects in large building projects and their relative importance. Delay factors were categorized into nine groups: Materials, Financing, Government, Manpower, Environment, Contractual relation, Equipment, Changes, and Scheduling and controlling techniques. Ogunlana & Promkuntong (1996) studied the delays in building projects in Thailand, as an example of developing countries. Twenty six causes of construction delays were identified, grouped according to who was responsible for the delay. A more detailed study was carried out by Kumaraswamy and Chan (1995), to investigate the principal causes of construction delay in both building and civil engineering projects. They group 83 hypothesized delay factors into eight major factor categories. Al-Ghafly and AlKhalil (1995) conducted a study to determine the most important causes of delay in public utility projects. The causes are grouped into six major categories of delay. There has been a considerable and continued interest in the effects of construction delays in