Rural roads play an indispensable role in economic and social well-being, especially in developing countries, contributing to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. For this reason, it is necessary to plan these projects properly to guarantee their success. In this line, the objective of this research is to identify significant variables generating overruns in time and cost using empirical data of 535 rural road projects in Colombia from 2015 to 2018. Bivariate analysis, with statistical tools like Spearman’s Rho and Kruskal–Wallis, allowed identifying that higher values of variables like budget and project intensity are related to higher deviations in cost and time. Additionally, it was found that projects with shorter durations are reporting higher time overruns. The worst performers are projects executed in the year that council mayors start their terms, those developed in municipalities with more resources, and those awarded using a competitive bidding process. Multivariate analysis, through Random Forest, assessed the effect of considering all variables interacting simultaneously and ranking them in order of importance. The results demonstrated a relationship between cost and time performance, and that numerical variables are more significant than the categorical ones. This study contributes to a better understanding of the causes of delays and cost overruns on rural roads, providing useful insight for researchers and industry practitioners.

ResumenLos retrasos y sobrecostos en proyectos de construcción son objeto de constante preocupación por parte de los desarrolladores de proyectos, ya que incluso pueden afectar la viabilidad de estos. Por esto, es necesario estudiar las causas, especialmente en Colombia donde las causas generadoras de este tipo de desviaciones no han sido analizadas a profundidad. Esta investigación, realizó inicialmente una revisión de la literatura para identificar causas generadoras de desviaciones en tiempos y costos a nivel mundial. Posteriormente, se realizó una encuesta dirigida a profesionales dedicados al desarrollo de proyectos de construcción en Colombia, para poder conocer en su concepto los factores significativos en la generación de desviaciones en tiempos y costos. Finalmente, se ejecutó un análisis de significancia basado en los factores influyentes, estableciendo las correlaciones entre estos

Construction projects are carried out under the triple constraint of cost, time, and scope, as stated in the project management literature. However, time and cost deviations in the construction industry are frequent, and their magnitude in many cases is considerable, generating harmful consequences. This paper developed a literature review to examine 33 research papers published since 1988 in the Web of Science database to identify the main factors causing these deviations, demonstrating that there is no evidence that it is a problem exclusive from a region, country, or project type. A list of 74 factors has been identified from the top ten reported in each paper. The factors were grouped, taking into account their origin. Simultaneously through literature review, tools, methods, and approaches of Lean Construction were also identified, and after an analysis of its nature, these tools were assigned to the previously identified factors considering the possibilities to mitigate their effects. For more than 88% of the identified factors, a Lean tool, method, or approach was identified, demonstrating that both topics are related, and the body of literature developed must be integrated.

Delays and cost escalations in construction projects are problems that have been approached by many researchers through time, developing a significant body of literature. This paper developed a literature review to examine 30 research papers published since 1988 in the Web of Science database to identify the main factors causing these deviations. The results show that articles are covering different continents, decades, and project types (infrastructure-building). There are more articles regarding time deviation, and most of the articles belong to Asia and Africa. A list of 73 factors reported in the papers and also the top 10 most common factors. Factors were grouped considering the project life cycle stages, listing those related to Planning/Design (17), and Construction (46) and ten additional factors related to external causes were included.