The construction industry plays an important role in the development of nations through which society achieves its goals of urban and rural development. But construction delays played a significant role to retard the achievement of these goals. Therefore, this study was conducted to identify the major causes of delays and its’ effects; and proposing methods of minimizing delays in construction projects. Top causes of delay were identified using the analyzed Relative Importance Index (RII) from all respondents’ perception that summarized from eight related categories, and most of them relied on contractors and consultant related factors. Least bid contract award, inaccurate cost estimate, incomplete design preparation, delay response/poor inspection, and material price escalation and inflation were the leading causes of delay. On the other side, time overrun was the leading effect of delay and cost overrun followed it. Significant of the correlation between two variables was tested using the computed Spearman rank correlation coefficient (r_S) and its critical value estimated for the number of variables with a 95% confidence level. In contractor related causes of delay, there was a positive significant relationship between client and contractor only with r_S= 0.80 and critical r_S of 0.786 at 5% level of significance based on seven variables. But there was no significant relationship between consultant and client; and consultant and contractor correlation. In addition, there was no significant correlation for other related factors with 5 or more number of variables. In consideration of all causes of delay with 39 variables, there were positive significant relationships between each stakeholder. The result indicated that as the number of variables decrease, it is difficult to attain a significant relationship between variables. Finally, delay minimizing approaches were proposed based on the nature of the causes of delay. Adopting a new contract award, coordinated project management, design evaluation, enforcing contract agreement, training packages, and incentive mechanism was proposed to minimize the causes of delay in North Shoa.

Keywords: Construction, Delay, Delay Causes, Delay Effect, Correlation Analysis, Minimizing delay