Construction
Why Construction Projects Miss Their Start Dates?
6th February, 2026
A Sequential Research Study to Understand and Mitigate Construction Project Start Delays
Background
A large, multi-regional construction contractor delivering commercial, industrial, healthcare, and institutional projects was experiencing recurring delays at the project start stage. While execution post-start remained strong, missed start dates were driving cost pressure, schedule compression, and stakeholder friction, without a clear, data-backed understanding of root causes.
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:
- Quantify how frequently construction projects fail to start on time and the typical duration of delays
- Identify the most common and most disruptive causes of delayed project starts
- Understand perceived levels of control contractors have over mitigating start delays
- Evaluate the effectiveness of current mitigation strategies and setup practices
- Assess how materials, equipment, and shared services are sourced during project setup
- Examine additional challenges associated with projects executed in live or occupied environments
- 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:
- Extent of the Problem
- Share of projects starting on time vs. delayed
- Primary Drivers of Delay
- Regulatory and permitting constraints
- Labor, material, and equipment availability
- Organizational Control & Impact
- Perceived control over mitigating delays
- Financial, operational, and relationship impacts
- 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
- Decision-Making During Project Setup: Explored how start-date decisions are actually made versus how they are defined on paper.
- Equipment & Materials Sourcing Realities: Examined tensions between centralized resources, just-in-time sourcing, and project-level autonomy.
- Regulatory & External Dependency Management: Unpacked perceptions of low control highlighted in the quantitative phase.
- Live / Occupied Environment Constraints: Deepened understanding of staging, safety, and operational disruption challenges.
- 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:
- Shift Setup Planning Earlier: Move equipment, materials, and logistics planning into preconstruction and design phases rather than procurement or execution
- Clarify Start-Readiness Ownership: Establish clear accountability for start-date decisions and setup milestones
- Standardize Shared Service Access: Create consistent, mandatory checkpoints for evaluating internal equipment and shared resources
- Engage External Stakeholders Proactively: Formalize early engagement with regulators, inspectors, and key suppliers
- 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
First published by Jasper Colin, Amber & Bull’s parent company.
