Identifying and Ranking Mitigation Measures for Delay Factors in Metro Rail Transit Systems: An Industrial Management Perspective from India

Abstract

This study identifies and ranks mitigation measures for delay factors affecting Metro Rail Transit System (MRTS) projects in India, framing delay mitigation as an industrial management and information-coordination problem rather than a purely technical construction issue. Delay factors are grouped under five operational categories — labour, equipment, material, technical, and finance — and each category is paired with a set of candidate mitigation measures drawn from industry practice. Data were collected from 107 MRTS professionals identified through snowball sampling, comprising client-side (38.3%), contractor-side (33.6%), and consultant-side (28.0%) respondents with varied levels of field experience across 93 distinct designations. Respondents indicated which mitigation measures they consider effective for each delay category and estimated the percentage of category-specific delay that these measures can eradicate. The findings show that proper labour management prior to activity scheduling (88.8%), proper resource planning for materials (74.8%), expediting organizational decision-making (83.2%), timely maintenance of equipment (69.2%), and ensuring accurate cost estimation during tendering (70.1%) are the most widely endorsed measures within their respective categories. Weighted mean perceived-effectiveness scores range from 58.1% (equipment) to 66.5% (labour) across categories. The results indicate that managerial and information-coordination measures are consistently endorsed above purely technological ones, a finding relevant to industrial management applications seeking to prioritize low-cost, high-adoption decision-support interventions in large infrastructure projects.