Delays in Bridge Construction of Department of Highways

Abstract

At present, the Department of Highways (DOH) constructs bridges to facilitate and secure the road users. However. some bridge construction projects were delayed. damaging the economy and country development, because road users waste time and expenses in the travels, leading to cost increasing and other effects. This research aimed to study the causes of delays in 42 bridge construction projects of DOH. The methodologies comprised: 1) collecting the delay factor s from literature reviews and an expert interview, 2) analyzing of the frequencies. severities, and importance of the factors by a questionnaire survey of 47 personnels of project managers, project engineers, assistant project engineers , and site engineers from DOH and contractors, and 3) analyzing the guidelines to avoid and to solve the important problems by reviewing of the formers research works and an expert interview. From the study, it was found that the factors causing delays are: the lack of labors during harvesting season, long holidays during festivals, high biding competition, fluctuating fuel prices, in sufficiency of machines, facility inadequacy, rights of way problem asking collaboration from contractors to stop the construction during, New Year and Songkran holidays. Finally , the guidelines to prevent and to solve the problems were proposed in the research such as intensive coordination in removing existing facilities, rights of way transfer preparation, and contract extension in case of acts of god .