Abstract
Construction time is a major factor that affects the interests of all parties involved in a building project. The variance of construction time, in particular, only the delay in construction can have significant impacts for both client and contractor. Various methods are well established for controlling construction time in the process of implementing a building project. Nevertheless, overrun in construction time is still a typical problem in construction practice. This paper presents a distribution of time variance (Tv) between the scheduled contract time and the completion time in undertaking building projects according to data collected from major public sector construction organisations in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. The Gaussian distribution has been adopted to describe the general distribution of time variance. The study analyses the major causes contributing to such distribution and proposes a Tv control chart for monitoring the degree of time variance during the construction process. Using the control chart, the project manager can identify whether the time variance is due to abnormal causes or common management related factors. Methods are also suggested for controlling and mitigating the time variance.