Causes of delays in slum reconstruction projects in India

Slums are densely populated areas developed without proper physical planning and where the majority of people live without basic life essentials. They pose major challenges in developing countries. During the execution of slum rehabilitation projects, resident families experience significant social and economic disruptions. A scan of extant literature reveals that most of the studies on slum reconstruction, in India, are conducted in the socio-economic and design issues. These studies are focused primarily on the evolution of slums, and the social, health, economic, infrastructure, inequality, layout and design aspects of slums. Existing literature has not revealed project management aspects of slum reconstruction projects particularly the delays that occur during the construction phase of the project. For the purpose of this study, six slum rehabilitation projects have been selected, located in the urbanized western region of India. Using the Relative Importance Index (RII) and the Importance Index (IMPI) as tools to analyse the data, key factors responsible for delays have emerged. These point directly to the issue of non-application of scientific project management techniques for these projects. Furthermore, two-step cluster analysis has been used to check the most significant predictor and to validate the findings of RII and IMPI. The findings of the study concluded that the most significant factors causing delays in slum rehabilitation projects in the four-phase of project life cycle are ‘source of financing’ in initiation stage, ‘project scope’ in planning stage, ‘managing working capital’ in execution stage, and ‘the snag list issues related to quality not being addressed’ in the close-out stage. The findings of the study are important in understanding the dominant causes for delays in slum rehabilitation projects, and to a considerable extent can be globalized, especially in countries with dense populations.