Developing a user plug-in to assess delay causes' impact on construction projects in Egypt

There are three main criteria that account for a construction project's success: completion on-time, within budget, and following the specifications. Nowadays, construction projects are facing various problems where delays are considered major one of them, particularly in Egypt. Analyzing construction delay causes while attempting to mitigate their impact is a matter of crucial importance. That's why a program was developed to help the user assess the delay causes' impact with respect to the project's concerned activities. Besides, it was designed to identify the potential mitigation measures according to the delay cause type. The Building Information Modeling (BIM) was the platform used to carry out such analysis. Thus, the main objective of this study is to investigate the delay causes' effect on the project's duration and cost. This was achieved by analyzing the concerned activities' affected duration and cost, according to the selected delay cause and its associated mitigation measures, by means of a developed user plug-in. Then, duration/cost summary tables were presented for the user to highlight the main findings in terms of delay and saving impact. The attained results were considered important indicators to be referred to for similar cases throughout the project progress. Apart from being a helpful tool for assessing construction delay causes' impact, this developed user plug-in could also serve in future research works associated to this subject. (C) 2021 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier BV on behalf of Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University.