4 months Behind Schedule: How to Find the Real Cause of Construction Delays Before It's Too Late

Gil Rosa
Jun 18
2 min read

GRPM Services | Strategic Project Advisory

When a job's this far off track, the problem isn't time. It's trust, planning, and process. Here's how to find the root cause and turn the ship before it sinks.

It Always Starts the Same Way…

You get the call.

"The project's 4 months behind. The agency's furious. The GC is in a tailspin. Can you help?"

By the time we're brought in, the damage is done or close to it. Schedules are shredded. Tempers are hot. Payments are frozen. And everyone is blaming everyone else.

The irony? The root cause of these delays usually happened months ago.

Hidden in plain sight.

The Myth of the Big Delay

Most people look for a moment that caused the delay.

"The steel delivery was late."
"The sub walked off the job."
"We lost a month to inspections."

But here's the truth:

Delays don't happen overnight. They accumulate in drips until the dam breaks.

The job doesn't go 4 months over schedule because of one mistake. It gets there from 4 months of small, unchecked breakdowns.

The Real Root Causes We Keep Finding

After decades in the field and the conference room, we've diagnosed hundreds of delayed projects. These are the patterns that come up again and again:

1. No Flow Between Office and Field

The PM thinks one thing. The site super sees another. The foremen are improvising. The result? Chaos in motion. Every misalignment costs time.

2. Reactive Planning (aka "Fire Drill Leadership")

Instead of working from a proactive, weekly-adjusted schedule, most teams operate in a state of survival mode. There's no lookahead. No prep. No system.

3. Assumed Accountability

"We told them." Sure, but was it documented? Did anyone confirm? Did the scope have clear trade-level task durations, sequences, and constraints? If not, it's not real.

4. The No-Show Recovery Plan

Even when things go sideways, most teams have no recovery strategy. No escalation plan. No mitigation protocol. They hope things magically fix themselves.

GRPM's Root Cause Recovery Framework

When we're called into situations like this, we move fast but precisely.

Here's how we isolate the real breakdown:

Rapid Schedule Autopsy
We pull the baseline, updates, and field logs. Then, we trace where the sequence broke down.
Scope-Schedule Crosswalk
We map the actual scope to the schedule, identifying all unplanned, vague, or misaligned work items.
Team Coordination Review
We assess meeting rhythms, decision trees, and communication flow between the office, field, subs, and owner.
Field-to-Office Sync Analysis
Where do RFI responses, CO approvals, or direction changes get stuck? We find the clogs and clear them.