Why Construction Projects Miss Their Start Dates?

Key challenges included:

• Missed start dates despite strong downstream delivery
• Rising labor and material costs during idle periods
• Margin pressure from compressed schedules
• Friction with owners, suppliers, and subcontractors
• Unclear ownership of start-readiness decisions

To move beyond internal assumptions, the contractor partnered with Jasper Colin to conduct a focused, research-led study to diagnose root causes and identify actionable levers to improve start-date reliability.

Research Objectives

The study was designed to:

1. Quantify how frequently construction projects fail to start on time and the typical duration of delays
2. Identify the most common and most disruptive causes of delayed project starts
3. Understand perceived levels of control contractors have over mitigating start delays
4. Evaluate the effectiveness of current mitigation strategies and setup practices
5. Assess how materials, equipment, and shared services are sourced during project setup
6. Examine additional challenges associated with projects executed in live or occupied environments
7. Clarify ownership and accountability for start-readiness decisions across roles

Methodology & Approach

Jasper Colin adopted a sequential explanatory research design, where quantitative findings informed and shaped a targeted qualitative deep-dive. This approach ensured statistical robustness while allowing for contextual understanding of decision-making, trade-offs, and on-ground constraints that drive delayed project starts.

Quantitative Research -> Qualitative Research

Phase 1: Quantitative Research 

The quantitative phase established the scale, frequency, and structural drivers of delayed project starts across the U.S. construction landscape.

Sample Overview

• Geography: United States
• Sample size: 200 senior construction decision-makers
• Seniority: C-suite, owners, VPs, directors, senior managers
• Roles: Project executives, project managers, construction directors, preconstruction leaders, operations leaders
• Firm size: Mid-to-large contractors (50+ employees), skewed toward 250+ employee organizations
• Project value exposure: $10M to $500M+ projects

Quantitative Focus Areas
The survey was structured to answer four core questions:

1. Extent of the Problem
   • Share of projects starting on time vs. delayed
2. Primary Drivers of Delay
   • Regulatory and permitting constraints
   • Labor, material, and equipment availability
3. Organizational Control & Impact
   • Perceived control over mitigating delays
   • Financial, operational, and relationship impacts
4. Current Mitigation & Setup Practices
   • Planning, sourcing, and technology adoption
   • Ownership of start-readiness decisions

Quantitative results were analyzed to identify high-incidence issues, areas of low perceived control, and decision points with the greatest variability across firms. These findings directly informed the design of the qualitative phase.

Phase 2: Qualitative Deep-Dive 

The qualitative phase was designed to unpack the "why" behind the quantitative patterns, moving beyond what causes delays to how decisions are made, where breakdowns occur, and what trade-offs teams face in real project environments.

Qualitative Sample

• 10 in-depth interviews (45 minutes each)
• Participants drawn from the quantitative respondent pool
• Mix of project executives, operations leaders, and preconstruction heads
• Representation across commercial, healthcare, industrial, and data center projects

Qualitative Probe Areas & Sample Questions

1. Decision-Making During Project Setup
   Explored how start-date decisions are actually made versus how they are defined on paper.
2. Equipment & Materials Sourcing Realities
   Examined tensions between centralized resources, just-in-time sourcing, and project-level autonomy.
3. Regulatory & External Dependency Management
   Unpacked perceptions of low control highlighted in the quantitative phase.
4. Live / Occupied Environment Constraints
   Deepened understanding of staging, safety, and operational disruption challenges.
5. Accountability & Incentives
   Explored misalignment between roles responsible for planning versus outcomes.

Strategic Recommendations

Based on the findings, Jasper Colin outlined several strategic levers for improving project start reliability:

1. Shift Setup Planning Earlier: Move equipment, materials, and logistics planning into preconstruction and design phases rather than procurement or execution
2. Clarify Start-Readiness Ownership: Establish clear accountability for start-date decisions and setup milestones
3. Standardize Shared Service Access: Create consistent, mandatory checkpoints for evaluating internal equipment and shared resources
4. Engage External Stakeholders Proactively: Formalize early engagement with regulators, inspectors, and key suppliers
5. Design for Live Environments: Treat operational constraints as a core planning input, not an exception

Impact

The study provided leadership with a clear, data-backed understanding of where project starts were breaking down and why. By reframing project setup as a strategic capability rather than an administrative phase, the organization was able to:

• Identify high-impact process improvements
• Reduce uncertainty in early-stage scheduling
• Strengthen coordination across planning, procurement, and operations
• Lay the foundation for more predictable, resilient project starts