Abstract:
Kashmir has been a disputed territory between Pakistan and India since 1947. Therefore,
proper attention to develop infrastructure has been a challenge throughout. On 8th October,
2005 a devastating earthquake hit various districts of Azad Jammu & Kashmir. A major loss
of lives (above 0.1 million people) and property occurred as a result of the earthquake. After
the earthquake, the government as well as some local and international donor agencies
including United Nations undertook the task of reconstruction of infrastructure in the region.
The development included construction of new buildings, highways and bridges. However,
most of these projects were got delayed. In the present research study, qualitative analysis of
delay factors was carried out to assess the major problems in the construction projects on the
basis of questionnaire survey of major stake holders.
The study was undertaken by a questionnaire based survey comprising of 65 delay factors.
Data was collected from 48 different projects, 138 respondents including 41 from client, 49
from consultant and 48 responses from contractor from different cities of Azad Jammu &
Kashmir, and was analyzed using MS Excel and SPSS-17. The research revealed that
shortage of unskilled labor, incomplete documentation for bidding, claiming of commission
for approval of work, frequent re-work done by the contractor and effect of weather on
projects are the major delay factors for development of proper infrastructure and construction
projects in Azad Jammu & Kashmir. All the stakeholders of the construction industry in Azad
Jammu & Kashmir should emphasis on the issues ranked higher in the present study to keep
their projects on the track and to avoid time overruns. The contractor should make the
payments to subcontractors at right time, should have sufficient finances available with him.
Contractor should hire well qualified staff for the project which should be well aware of
project management process. The client should make the decisions regarding any change at
later stages as early as possible, the progress payments that are due to client for contractor
should be made at appropriate time and the estimates that are being made at planning and
design phase should have maximum precision. The consultant should give his special
attention to the issues that are related to change requests. The verification of changes
submitted by the contractor should be done as early as possible
